Half The Perfect World

Madeleine Peyroux is back. Described as "a thing of late night beauty" by The Times, Madeleine returns with an amazing new album, 'Half The Perfect World', packed with brand new songs and well known hits. 'Half the Perfect World' focuses on artists and writers from Madeleine?s lifetime, including Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Fred Neil & Joni Mitchell, and features a stunning duet with K.D. Lang. The new album is beautifully produced by Larry Klein, as was Madeleine?s previous album 'Careless Love', which has sold more than a million copies worldwide. This new record serves as both a complement and a contrast to 'Careless Love'. "This record is different from Careless Love in the sense that there?s a unison of joy on it," Peyroux says of the new album. "It?s pushing certain boundaries for me". Southern-born, Paris-honed Billie Holiday sound-a-like Madeleine Peyroux has been charming audiences with her sophisticated renditions of jazz/blues standards and torch songs for a decade now. Half The Perfect World differs from previous albums Dreamland and Careless Love in that Peyroux covers songwriters from recent times, rather than those of yesteryear. Not only that, but she has also included more of her own compositions -- four in total -- penned with long-time collaborator/producer Larry Klein. It's her own "It's All Right" (which also has writing credits from Steely Dan's Walter Becker) that gets the album off to an infectious and insouciant start. Backed by musicians Sam Yahel (Norah Jones, Bill Frisell), David Piltch (Holly Cole), Jay Bellerose and drummer Scott Amendola, amongst others, Peyroux then proceeds to take us through a smoky, emotive world of romance, eroticism and heartbreak populated by re-interpretations of classics like Joni Mitchell's "River" (a duet with k.d. lang), Tom Waits' "The Heart Of Saturday Night", Leonard Cohen's "Blue Alert" -- even Charlie Chaplin's "Smile". A string-laden version of Serge Gainsbourg's "La Javanaise" provides the anticipated French touch, while the remainder of Peyroux's own songs, in particular the heartfelt "California Rain" and the poignant "Once in a While", stand up surprisingly well next to the rest of the material. --Paul Sullivan