Emma Smith: Meshuga Baby

In early 2012, Emma Smith, already an established member of Britain's National Youth Jazz Orchestra but still only 21 years old, released her debut album. The record mixed standards with Smith's own compositions and established the London-based artist as a talented singer and songwriter. Another album would usually have been expected within a year or two, but it would be another decade before the second album, Meshuga Baby, saw the light of day. It's been worth the wait: Smith's early talent is now coupled with ten more years of experience and maturity and on this evidence she has become one of the most stylish and original interpreters of Songbook classics on the scene.

Smith hasn't been idle in the intervening years, among other activities she's a member of vocal trio The Puppini Sisters, was a co-presenter of BBC radio's Jazz Now and has joined Georgina Jackson to form a new big band, The Big Swing. On Meshuga Baby—the title is a play on the Yiddish for crazy and reflects Smith's own Jewish roots—she again combines her versions of standards with original songs co-written with pianist Jamie Safir and performed vivaciously by the pair along with bassist Conor Chaplin and drummer Luke Tomlinson.

The cover versions range from the light-hearted fun of "Makin' Whoopee," "Think Pink" and Willie Dixon's "Seventh Son" to heartfelt and beautiful interpretations of "People" and "But Not For Me." There's also "Hollis Brown," a version of the Bob Dylan song about a man driven by poverty and despair to kill his whole family. Smith sings unaccompanied at first, then bass, drums and piano enter slowly, gradually building the drama and intensity as the story reaches its devastating conclusion.

There are four Smith/Safir originals. "My Revelation" is an upbeat, positive tale of how the singer can now "see the wood from the trees"; "Ballad of a Wayward Woman" tells the story of a woman who's desperate to free herself from the humdrum before it's too late; "Monogamy Blues" swings cheerily along as Smith sings about a ten-year relationship gone stale. "Sit On My Knee and Tell Me That You Love Me" finds Smith taking charge of relationships. It's not a cover of, nor as rude as, the Monty Python song of a very similar title, but it shares the same irreverent spirit, emphasised by Smith's exuberant vocal.

Smith's take on "There's No Business Like Show Business" turns the song on its head: the tempo is barely snail's-pace, the accompaniment spare, and Smith sings like someone who's well aware that not everything about it is appealing. This is a most striking reinterpretation of an oft performed and recorded number, a glowing reminder that a performer with imagination can still find new ways of bringing life to a classic: and Smith is most certainly an imaginative, and talented, performer.

Comments