With The Signal already released in north America and greeted with great fanfare by many reviewers the singer-songwriter Elizabeth Shepherd’s latest album released in late-January this side of the Atlantic may well build on the hype. It certainly deserves to.
Shepherd’s last fairly under-the-radar album Rewind released in 2012 shone the spotlight on her arranging ability, and much more recently the low-voiced experimentally-inclined singer has been presenting her Mixtape Sessions in Toronto. If The Signal doesn’t establish her name a little more on open-eared music lovers’ consciousness generally in jazz circles and beyond then that will be a pity.
The Signal’s sample-based title track is unusual and while the media cultural reference may well mystify non-Canadians (the track features an extract of the voice of CBC radio programme The Signal’s Laurie Brown) this stirring duet with Alex Samaras based around the premiss of a dreamy notion (“don’t you love those stories about people who arrange to meet in five years time somewhere, just meet and then decide what happens?”) is fresh.
The presence of guitarist Lionel Loueke is also a big plus point in the instrumental mix: the Herbie guitarist features on the tracks ‘Willow’, Shepherd inspired in her lyrics by a book about historical feminine archetypes, and the bass-led ‘This.’ Hip-hop flavours are folded in on the highly atmospheric ‘Lion’s Den’ a strong indication that Shepherd is not stuck in a rose-tinted imaginary jazz past ruled by standards nostalgia.
Stephen Graham