(...oh god she's sooo gorgeous...)
Cibelle - Cibelle (2003)
What can I say about this album - it's the perfect combination of everything I love in this world. Sultry female vocalist singing brazilian portuguese, hot samba rhythms, cool bossa harmonies, and downtempo electronica... need I say more? My favourite tune has got to be "Hate"; I love how it starts up summery and nice and at 1:54 the colour of the music changes and it goes all dark. Then in her second album she moved to London, threw away that perfect brazilian electronica sound and went acoustic! That made me sad, because her acoustic offerings don't quite have the same magic as her electronic tunes.
Youtube doesn't have a good representation of her music, but here are some tunes:
^ Probably the most traditionally brazillian sounding tune on the album.
^ Not actually on the debut album, but a good representation of what she sounds like.
Mayra Andrade - Navega (2006)
This is one of those albums which doesn't sound at all special on first listen, and to the unaware it might look like a complete cliche. Sultry female latin vocalist, check. Tropical acoustic guitars, check. Ethnic percussion, check. And the tunes! They start of unassuming, pretty, and just when you're about to dismiss it as yet another latin tune sung in an obscure language (Cape Verde-an creole, which sounds like Portuguese), bang, this chord comes in, or the tempo changes, or the meter changes, and the music opens up and reveals a depth of feelings, emotions, thoughts, and labour that has gone into making this album the masterpiece that it is. Mayra Andrade sings about the life of the people on Cape Verde; democracy, migration, and more traditional folky tunes about youth, courtship, farewell. Even without reading the lyric translations, you can feel the struggles and the hopes of the Cape Verde-an people.
Dimokransa is the perfect opening track to Navega. Starts off pretty, but later morphs into something quite intensely hypnotising.
^ (despite the cheap karaoke quality of the video, the maker also has included a translation of the lyrics! Read them, those are some big lyrics.)
Amy Winehouse - Frank (2003)
For me, Frank wins over Back to Black because it sounds... Frank. Sincere. Accomplished. It's almost as if she's distilled her person into the music, and that's why I absolutely adore this album.
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Naturally (2005)
Soul revival! The sound of 60s, pure, in the 00s. Sharon Jones is a bad-ass singer, and she works that. I love this album so much I have no words to describe it, so here's some of that Sharon Jones magic...
^ No video, but this is my favourite SJ & the Dap Kings tune. I love love love that descending guitar motif which kicks in at 0:06.
^ Also another great tune, and a video that matches the era in which the music was inspired.
Melody Gardot - Worrisome Heart (2008)
I'm pretty sure that the only reason why golem09 doesn't also have this album on his list is that he probably forgot about it. Momentarily.
But Melody Gardot, jazz singer, slinky romantic jazz bar tunes, sparsely arranged - a clash of cymbal here, a dot of bass there, and a gentle piano chord somewhere - just the bare minimum require to fill up the space occupied by her smokey voice. Her vocal performances are spine-tingling, goosebumps-inducing, stop-you-in-you-tracks, hypnotising affairs. Her voice is excellent live, but if she ever wishes to stop touring she can make a decent career out of being a studio musician, because she's able to cut through all the studio equipment and sound like she's singing to you in your living room. It's an accomplished debut, catchy enough for noobs to enjoy, with enough jazz pedigree that more demanding listeners can pick up. If there is any artist that could convert a mainstream music person into a hardcore jazz fan, no doubt, it will be Melody Gardot.
And some new stuff