Melody Gardot....

“A triumphant performance by a singer-songwriter who is becoming one of the major talents of our time. Her singing had a sotto voce quality that was simply mesmerising.” The Times

“A remarkable artist.” The Guardian

With her debut album ‘Worrisome Heart’, Melody Gardot displayed her instinctive gift for transforming the traditions of jazz and blues with her personal kiss of life. But even her most ardent admirers will be amazed at the giant creative leap forward she has taken with the follow-up, ‘My One And Only Thrill’. Mixing latin rhythms, finger-snapping blues and deep, smouldering torch songs, it’s an album that seems to have been shaped from several lifetimes of love, loss and longing.
 
Though she’s still only in her early twenties, the rapturous reception accorded to ‘Worrisome Heart’ by fans and critics meant that she suddenly found her life moving at triple speed, as Melody and her band bounced between gigs, hotels and airports and demand blossomed across several continents. Yet even with this exacting schedule, she made sure that her plans for ‘My One And Only Thrill’ had been painstakingly laid.
 
“We walked into the studio with all the songs written, which was important because you need to have a good idea about how the record’s going to be. Larry was keen on this concept and echoed this thought: that you ought to take the music, work it up with the musicians and get the rhythm tracks right. Then you can decide where to lay strings and where to leave them out. It’s a bit of a removal process really…stripping down what you’re doing to make room for something else…essentially dividing sounds in half to make space for the orchestra.”

Under the helmsmanship of producer Larry Klein (fresh from his Grammy-winning work with Herbie Hancock on River: The Joni Letters), the subtle empathy that the group of young musicians bring to their live performances is masterfully recreated on the album. Another of the disc’s secret weapons is the addition of Vince Mendoza’s orchestral arrangements. As well as being a solo artist and composer, the Connecticut-born Mendoza has excelled himself in collaborations with such musical thoroughbreds as Al Di Meola, Joni Mitchell, Kyle Eastwood and Joe Zawinul. On Melody’s album, his arrangements run the gamut from sleek, skipping Brazilian rhythms to slow, brooding dramas. One obvious highlight is ‘Our Love Is Easy’, a steamy epic of forbidden love. Echoes of Peggy Lee or Frank Sinatra in his Only The Lonely period are probably no accident.
The Mendoza magic has also been liberally sprinkled over the album’s title track. It’s a haunting ballad which seems to hang in space, held aloft by delicate piano playing and a shimmering mirage of strings. In mid-song, the orchestra veers off on a dramatic detour, spiralling upwards in a vertiginous swirl of sound reminiscent of one of Bernard Herrmann’s Hitchcock soundtracks.

Awash again in rich, moody strings is the heartfelt reverie of ‘Deep Within The Corners Of My Mind’, while the elegant bluesiness of ‘Lover Undercover’ (a song which she has already been testing on live audiences) has been constructed over long, legato string phrases. Melody’s latest album, ‘My One And Only Thrill’ has met with huge critical acclaim internationally. She’s currently touring the world gathering fans along the way.
http://www.melodygardot.co.uk/gb/biography/