Abbey Lincoln - Abbey Sings Abbey (2007)

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Abbey Lincoln - Abbey Sings Abbey (2007)

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Product Description: In her oblique, singular trajectory across the multiple currents and trends that have fashioned the incredibly rich and complex landscape of contemporary Afro-American music these past fifty years, Abbey Lincoln has gradually established herself in everyone's eye as the great female voice of the post-free era.
On this new album she performs exclusively personal songs, carefully chosen from the nine recordings she made for Verve over the last fifteen years. With a consummate sense of theatre, alternating slow, crepuscular ballads - almost static in their imperceptible unfolding - and songs of timeless sophistication with melodies that are more archaistic, at the frontiers of country-music and folk, she, using little, almost secret Impressionist touches, recapitulates the skillfully "natural" art of phrasing with all its intimate deployments, breaks and suspensions, revealing the magic spells of a rift that can't be confessed while plucking constantly at the strings of emotion with discretion and restraint and distilling, in its slightest inflexions, melancholy that is literally overwhelming.

Review: Five SURPRISING Stars!! Abbey Lincoln has been a pre-eminent jazz singer/songwriter for decades, leading the group more often than not because she was crafting the powerful, unusual, socially conscious songs she sang in her own pure, idiomatic way. She brings her extraordinary skills to this CD in a more different vein than I have ever heard. THe emphasis here is on the song and the delivery in different sonic frameworks. Without the expected pure jazz backgrounds, she adds in different types of music that she soars over, hinting at other exotic and different music forms, relying primarily on Larry Campbell's wonderful guitars with support from Scott Colley's bass, Gil Goldstein's accordion, drummer Shawn Pelton, and Dave Eggar's cello. Even with the different sonic backgrounds, there is still the jazzy, declarative phrasing, that wonderful internal rhythm of the delivery, and the wonderful personal vibrato. And it works beautifully, maybe opening her deeply personal music to other listeners beyond the jazz realm. A jazz singer for the ages and a pure singer for today!
The 'Pieces De Resistance', the best of the best, begin with "The World Is Falling Down" which gets a 'blues with a bounce' treatment that is startling but completely effective: a great performance that demonstrates the universality and capabilities of Abbey's music. "Throw It Away" gets the gypsy treatment, re-inventing the delivery and the atmosphere in a wonderful, mesmerizing performance. "Should've Been" is more along the expected jazz/blues arc: a great performance. "Bird Alone" is pure Abbey Lincoln lyrics and delivery. "Down Here Below" is a powerful, searing testament to living through the times and the pain. After decades of shaping her craft and her music within the jazz realm as one of it's 'supreme queens', Abbey Lincoln has created yet another surprise, based on some of her most well-known works and it is FABULOUS.