Track Listing

1. Instead
2. Bare Bones
3. Damn The Circumstances
4. River Of Tears
5. You Can't Do Me
6. Love And Treachery
7. Our Lady Of Pigalle
8. Homeless Happiness
9. To Love You All Over Again
10. I Must Be Saved
11. Somethin' Grand

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #357 in Music
• Released on: 2009-04-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 50 minutes

CD Description
Madeleine Peyroux is the best selling jazz vocalist of the last decade. With her new album Bare Bones Madeleine has crafted her best album yet, for the first time all the songs on the album have been written or co-written by Madeleine herself. “This really is a new experience for me - it’s almost as if I got to make my first record again,” she says. “I’d co-written a couple of times in the past, but this was a big leap for me as a writer, not only in the experience of writing but also the message I wanted to portray”.

Customer Reviews

TURN OFF THE PHONE - OPEN UP ANOTHER BOTTLE
This album features original compositions mainly co-written by the wistful, bluesy, sleepy-time-down-south voiced Madeleine Peyroux. Brim-full of wist, it offers no great stylistic surprises but it's still a fascinating album.

Peyroux can produce wonderful studio tracks but is said to be variable in live performance. I suspect this is because she's a private lady, uncomfortable in the limelight, and she wants to keep things that way. Even the album presentation - full lyrics accompanied by lots of shadowy pics of the diva preserves the effect of viewing Peyroux through a glass darkly, and it's this dark side that gives the album its edge. The melodies may be insinuatingly lovely, but the lyrics are often bleak. "I should have been a pair of ragged claws", "But for your love and treachery there's nothing left to fear" She has a folksy side, but the blues are never far away. Peyroux's musicians are marvellously in tune with her interpretations; the backings are perfection

I have to say that that I was wary of the album before I heard it. Part of me expected an unexceptional ego trip. I couldn't have been more wrong. This is a terrific album, instantly likeable but with depth. I'm gonna take Madeleine's advice and "...turn off the telephone, open up another bottle, send those people home..." and enjoy this album, again and again.

Business as usual
Aside from the fact that, for the first time, all the songs have been written or co-written by Madeleine herself it's pretty much business as usual here. No surprises or departures in style, just that familiar silky, fragile and delicious jazz voice wrapping itself around eleven new tunes co-written mostly with producer Larry Klein and also the likes of Steely Dan's Walter Becker.

Like a lazy flowing river on a still summer day the album drifts from beginning to end with nary a change of pace - the jaunty Becker/Klein collaboration "You Can't Do Me" as up-tempo as things get, Becker continuing his personal infatuation with the reggae-tinged arrangements that characterised his recent solo album. To his credit he clearly didn't keep his best songs for himself, the track bettering anything to be found on "Circus Money" (the same is true of his other contribution, the album's title track). To be honest, Peyroux never sounds entirely convincing delivering some brilliantly Dan-esque lyrics such as "Blewed like a Mississippi sharecropper, screwed like a high school cheerleader, tattooed like a popeyed sailorman - gone, gone, gone" but it's a small quibble. Where's Donald Fagen when you need him?

Only the plodding "Damn the Circumstances" fails to fully engage the senses, whilst Madeleine's own "I Must Be Saved" reveals a songwriting talent that bodes well for future projects. On top of that, "River of Tears" sounds like the musical lovechild of Klein and his former missus, Joni Mitchell. Praise indeed.

Beautiful though it undoubtedly is, the overall effect across eleven tracks leans dangerously towards the soporific. Still, for those in the know it's likely to be THE essential dinner party soundtrack for the forseeable future.

Ossified
If you're unfortunate enough to be invited to dinner by a Dido fan, take "Bare Bones" along; you might get some blessed relief from Dido's motel lobby muzak and your host/hostess might learn something. Because in her favour, Madeleine Peyroux does have an interesting voice, quite sultry, quite smoky at times. Disappointingly, the album does not do what it says on the tin. The bones are actually fleshed out with rather too lush arrangements. They're too "tasteful" for the sometimes quite heartbreaking lyrics. Peyroux probably gets played in better motel lobbies than Dido, and this album is pleasant enough background music, but its lack of light and shade soon begins to pall when you give it your undivided attention.