Madeleine Peyroux: Let's Walk

Madeleine Peyroux's career took off in 2004 with her second album, Careless Love (Rounder), covering songs by such 20th century greats as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Hank Williams. It was performed with a jazz sensibility, infusions of blues and touches of chanson, and mostly with jazz arrangements. In this respect, it continued the direction set by Peyroux's debut, Dreamland (Atlantic, 1996).

Since those early albums, Peyroux's trajectory has evolved. The jazz sensibility, and love of chanson and the blues, have remained in place. At the same time, the admixture of blues-rock, funk and gospel has grown more pronounced; the only more or less "pure" jazz track on Let's Walk, Peyroux's summer 2024 release, is "Showman Dan," a tribute to Peyroux's mentor, Danny Fitzgerald, leader of The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, a Paris-based busking outfit with which Peyroux travelled around Europe in her late teens. Meanwhile, the proportion of originals on Peyroux's albums has increased, though not in a straight line. Let's Walk, her ninth album, is comprised entirely of originals co-written with multi-instrumentalist Jon Herington, who also co-produced.

Herington was first heard with Peyroux on Secular Hymns (Impulse!, 2016), playing electric guitar, singing back-up vocals and arranging one track. Let's Walk is his first producing gig with Peyroux. Production chores aside, Herington's instrumental work is unobtrusively part of the album's success: notable moments include the swirling Hammond organ on "Blues For Heaven," the bayou blues guitar on "Please Come On Inside" (Dr John can be glimpsed in the wings), the straight-up blues guitar on "Showman Dan," and the playful synth-marimba on the closer, "Take Care," a good humored almost-novelty song about the importance of healthy eating.

Lyrically, the album focuses on social and political themes. This extends beyond generalities and into specifics: the gospel-infused "Let's Walk" addresses civil rights, "Please Come On Inside" refugees, "Me And The Mosquito" malaria, "Et Puis" white privilege, and "Nothing Personal" male sexual abuse of women. It has been said by some that Peyroux's political message is expressed a little too politely; certainly there are times when one is reminded of a review of one of Taylor Swift's June 2024 performances at Wembley Stadium, in which the writer observed that among the 85,000 crowd he observed "widespread outbreaks of good behavior." But as Peyroux's own concert at London's Barbican Hall on July 23, 2024 demonstrated, her message is no less effective for being delivered without bombast. (A review of that concert can be read here.)

Bottom line: How great it is to listen to a jazz-based US singer who is not afraid publicly to stand up against her country's approaching tide of neo-fascism and its plans to subvert the Constitution, ban abortions, generally wind the cultural clock back and even—according to the nutjob standing for Republican Vice President, who is so pig ignorant that he thinks Britain is an "Islamist" state—to ban divorce.

P.S. The YouTube below for "Showman Dan" includes film footage of Peyroux performing with The Lost Wandering Blues And Jazz Band back in the day.