Sarah Moule: Stormy Emotions

Stormy Emotions is the fifth release from Sarah Moule to feature songs by the late, great lyricist & poet Fran Landesman (1927-2011), dating back to It's a Nice Thought (Linn, 2002). In total those five albums contain over fifty songs with lyrics by Landesman, many of which were first recorded by Moule. If that seems an unusually high proportion of songs by one lyricist, the explanation is straightforward: from 1993 until 2011, Landesman wrote over 300 songs with renowned pianist, arranger & composer Simon Wallace; he and Moule are married, with a son, born in 2000. So, the songs on Moule's albums are not only by Landesman, they are also by Moule's husband, Wallace.

Rather than some form of nepotism being involved, it is far simpler; Landesman and Wallace wrote excellent songs together, and Moule is a first-rate jazz singer—she spent six years as featured vocalist with the John Wilson Orchestra before becoming a solo recording artist—whose voice and delivery are ideally suited to those songs. The sleeve of Stormy Emotions carries this quote, credited to Landesman, "I got lucky meeting Simon. That he married Sarah Moule was a bonus. She's the jazz vocalist par excellence." Amen.

Compared to her previous two albums which included songs by other writers alongside their Landesman-Wallace compositions, Stormy Emotions is totally Landesman-Wallace. Interestingly, the album opens with "Nothing Is Mine Now," the last song the pair worked on together, finishing it a couple of hours before Landesman's death, while the album closes with the title track, their very first collaboration, written on the day they met in 1993; Wallace says that Landesman gave him the lyrics and he wrote the tune in the car on the way home...

As jazz singers go, Moule is very economical, investing each song's lyrics with meaning and emotion, and not adding any superfluous embellishments or distractions such as scatting. In this, her performance is compatible with the rest of the album; the shortest track here is just over three minutes, the longest just over five, each one being long enough to convey what it has to. At the piano, Wallace keeps things simple but effective; he inserts occasional piano breaks but no prolonged solos. When reeds player Mark Lockheart appears for three tracks, his contributions on soprano sax or bass clarinet are subtly integrated into the songs to good effect. Similarly, the rhythm section—Moule regulars bassist Mick Hutton and drummer Paul Robinson, or Neville Malcolm and Rod Youngs—do not solo but frame Moule's voice very effectively.

Throughout, all concerned are clearly focused on conveying the lyrics and melodies of the songs as well as possible, not detracting from them. In this, they all succeed, with the end result being a near-perfect vocal jazz album, one that will be hard to top.

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