Careless Love

Ok now that Rounder has released Careless Love what do people think about it?

Here in Boston it's a beautiful fall Sunday morning and as I search through the FM dial I hear a voice...Billie Holiday? I listen a bit more and it's an NPR interview with Madeleine Peyroux. I instantly loved her voice and style. But what startled me was when she mentioned Elliott Smith ! I'm a 47 year old guy (originally from Montreal) and have traveled the World listening to all styles of music... all genres... I play old acoustic Country Blues myself and I find Elliott Smith was the most brilliant singer/songwriter of our time... also perhaps still undiscovered by many. To hear Madeleine mention him instantly made me appreciate her even more. I've been a fan of Elliott's since the first time I saw him in a little dingy bar in Seattle around 1996. I have much of his unreleased material which I would love to share with Madeleine... it is brilliant material... I feel it's better and more significant than his released material. Btw, his family has put out his last CD coming out this October (Songs from a Basement on a Hill).  

I'm looking forward to getting Careless Love.

- M. Ledoux

Tonight is a watermark moment for me, someone's seared an indelible tattoo of roses upon my soul, and all through song. 

I was in Barnes & Noble reading the early poems of Yeats tonight when they began to play what sounded like an old jazz standard from the early 1940's. Surely this was Billie Holiday, and a tune I hadn't heard before. 

The voice embraced you with a very warm but light touch, the throat of swans lilting over waters in blue melancholy, a voice that had all the direction of an easy breeze on a porch swing, all the romance and the charm of such a scene.  It was the first track to Careless Love.

I continued reading, enjoying the music for a while until a song just wooed me away from Yeat's poem to his Beloved.  The song was "You're gonna make me lonesome when you go." 

By this point I had already realized that it wasn't Billie Holiday--but the production had all the coziness of mid-twentieth century sound, this voice was so relaxed, perhaps coming from a better time because just about any voice nowadays--political or musical--seems rabid or forced or partisan or shrill, at least in comparison to what I was now hearing on this record.

Norah Jones is a great singer among others, but I was hearing something different with Madeleine--I heard master craftsmanship, I heard dedication and talent and experience that declared itself at the top of its form, a delivery that had so much distinction and merit that the voice was in a class by itself.

I immediately got up and went to the Music section of the store to find out the artist.  I had never heard of Madeleine Peyroux before, but, say like in the first moments when you eye a woman and you know you're gonna fall in love and there's nothing you can really do about it except calmy take the whims of fate and hope the brief moment won't be the last, I knew after listening to Madeleine Peyroux this was only the beginning of a new source of great song and melody.  Rarely does one get to find a new singer of this caliber.

The record also has two of my favorite songwriters represented: Leonard Cohen and Hank Williams (and of course Dylan's lovely tune).

As a singer/songwriter myself who's spent the last year and a half writing, recording almost every track, and producing my own album, American Gothic, I could say I was in shock with myself to find I hadn't heard of her earlier CD, Dreamland, from 8 years ago.

Influences in my own work and some of the people I truly admire are: Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, Chrissie Hynde, Leo Kottke, Joe Ely, David Gray, Nick Lowe, The Jayhawks.  I think Madeleine Peyroux is of the same high standard and talent.

After hearing just five tracks of Careless Love, I said to myself, I hope she and this record win several Grammys.  Thank you, Madeleine, for your devotion to your craft.