Cassandra Wilson - Thunderbird 2006

Cassandra Wilson's swinging for her own creative fences this time. The sultry, gentle, acoustic guitars on her last five recordings have been largely jettisoned for a more keyboard-and percussion -friendly approach -- which includes lots of programming and loops. To that end, she's enlisted flavor-of-the-year producer T-Bone Burnett and keyboardist Keith Ciancia. This pair hired a stellar group of players that include drummer Jim Keltner, bassist Reginald Veal (a near-constant here), guitarists Colin Linden and Marc Ribot, and programming whiz Mike Elizondo. Mike Piersante plays "keypercussion" (read: drum loops), Jay Bellerose and Bill Maxwell also contribute kit work. Keb Mo' guests on a track. Ever since signing to Blue Note, Wilson's walked a razor-wire between blues, pop, and jazz, but her recordings have always been intimate affairs whether she was singing songs by Robert Johnson orVan Morrison. While she does preserve a degree of that intimacy here, some of it has fallen by the wayside in favor of the near-constant presence of drum loops, with subtle samples dropped in giving the entire proceeding a slightly more urban feel. A startling example is "Go to Mexico," where a percussion loop and the vocal chant from the Wild Tchapitoulas "Hey Pocky A-Way," are directly sampled with new words and instrumentation layered over the top -- including Veal copying the bassline. In addition, Wilson sings in a voice not really heard from her before. Intertwined with her trademark, smoky contralto (Wilson has been deeply influenced by Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carterbut has become a true song stylist of her own), is a falsetto in the verse that feels like a deliberate attempt at singing "straight" modern pop. The thin, compressed production with her vocal mixed so high above the largely keyboard-driven instrumentation feels forced, at odds with the tune, and nearly sterile. Thankfully, it's the exception rather than the rule on Thunderbird. 
The atmospheric keyboard line that introduces her read of Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers' "Closer to You," gives way toKeltner's softly insistent trip-hop shuffle, Veal's minimal bassline, and Ciancia's piano, keyboards, and loops are the working elements here. Wilson's guitar drifts in under her aching, seductive vocal on the refrain as Veal subtly anchors her. Wilson's read of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Easy Rider" starts out that way -- with Linden and Ribot playing snaky and skeletal for the first two verses. It roars to life about two-and-half-minutes in, fully electric, dirty, nasty, and drenched in slow, deep swamp blues.Keltner's playing is utterly transfixing here. At a touch over seven minutes, its entrancing dynamics provide a virtual journey though the blues both past and future. The slippery drum loops re-enter on the band-written original "It Would Be So Easy," and here, club music touches pop touches the roots of the blues -- the former two happen because of the instrumentation, the latter is due to Wilson's instrument, which embodies them all and creates a new and ghostly meld. "Red River Valley" is the album's centerpiece. Accompanied only by Linden' electric slide guitar, it is full of the desolation of the tune's intent, but framed in the context of the Delta. It's one of two guitar/vocal duets here; the other one, the ballad "Lost," is more late-night Julie London than Billie Holiday. Willie Dixon's "I Want to Be Loved" is wonderful update of the blues, and "Poet" may not hit the Urban Top Ten chart, but it should; it's wondrously soulful, sexy, and glossy. While Wilson has certainly not lost any of her singular talent for interpreting the Chicago blues through the lens of jazz and pop , she has expanded her palette once more by creating an entirely new bag from which we might hear pop, through the age-old hypnotic, sensual, incantory veil of the blues.

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Cassandra Wilson - Belly of the Sun 2002

Cassandra Wilson continues to move down a highly eclectic path on Belly of the Sun, the somewhat belated follow-up to Traveling Miles. While displaying a jazz singer's mastery of melodic nuance and improvisatory phrasing, Wilsondraws on a variety of non-jazz idioms -- roots music, rock, Delta blues, country, soul -- to create a kind of earthy, intelligent pop with obvious crossover appeal. Her core band includes guitarists Marvin Sewell and Kevin Breit, who blend marvelously, Sewell mostly on mellow acoustic and Breit adding atmospheric touches on electric, 12-string, and slide guitars, as well as mandolin, banjo, and even bouzouki. Bassist Mark Peterson and percussionists Jeffrey Haynes and Cyro Baptista provide a superbly sensitive rhythmic foundation. But because Wilson returned to her home state of Mississippi to record most of this album, she made sure to book some time with local musicians. Thus guitarist Jesse Robinson guests on (and co-writes) the funky "Show Me a Love," and the octogenarian pianist "Boogaloo" Ames plays an unpolished yet utterly heartfelt duet with Wilson on the classic "Darkness on the Delta." Other guests include drummer Xavyon Jamison, trumpeter Olu Dara, pianist and vocalist Rhonda Richmond (who penned the slowly swaying "Road So Clear"), guitarist Richard Johnston, backup vocalists Patrice Monell, Jewell Bass, Henry Rhodes, and Vasti Jackson, and the children of New York's Middle School 44. Wilson delves into vintage blues with Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move" and a brief yet dynamic rendition of Robert Johnson's "Hot Tamales." But the best tracks are the rock/pop covers: the Band's "The Weight," Bob Dylan's "Shelter From the Storm," James Taylor's "Only a Dream in Rio," Jobim's "Waters of March," and Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman" (a 1968 hit for Glen Campbell). Wilson and band are in peak interpretive form on these ethereal reinventions. While her own lyrics may not rise to the level of a Robbie Robertson or a Bob Dylan, her versatility and focus come through clearly on the originals "Justice," "Just a Parade" (a collaboration with neo-soul rookie India.Arie), and the Caribbean-tinged "Cooter Brown." AMG.

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