Album review: Sarah Moule – Stormy Emotions

Sarah Moule (vocal); Simon Wallace (piano); Mick Hutton (bass on 7 tks); Neville Malcolm (bass on 4 tks); Paul Robinson (drums on 7 tks); Rod Youngs (drums on 4 tks) + Mark Lockheart (soprano sax/bass clarinet on 3 tks); Nigel Price (guitar on 4 tks); Charlie Cawood (acc. guitar on 1 tk).

(I reviewed this back in February and it has been on my car stereo ever since and it has been a long time since any CD has lasted that long – that’s how good it is! Words, music and voice are just so compelling. So, as the release date of March 19 approaches I’ve brought it forward as a birthday present to myself! – Lance)

Maybe, like me, you thought Fran Landesman only wrote one song when in actual fact she wrote lyrics for hundreds of them, the last 300+ in collaboration with British composer/pianist Simon Wallace who plays piano on this fine album. Wallace is also married to Moule who delivers what are surely the definitive versions of the songs.

This is an equilateral triangle that is just so perfectly balanced – words, music, voice. Each one enhancing the other with some icing on the cake from Wallace’s piano, Lockheart, Price, Cawood, bassists Hutton and Malcolm and drummers Robinson and Youngs. 

The title track which rounds off the album is just voice and piano and was in fact the first song that Landesman and Wallace wrote together. The opener, Nothing is Mine Now was the last song they wrote together and, sadly, Landesman passed away on the very day in 2011 that they completed it. It’s a song that epitomises a woman in her prime coming on strong with the object of her affection rather than a woman in her eighties about to enter the Valley of the Shadow … But her lyrics are timeless. Unlike the acknowledged greats such as Gershwin, Hart, Porter, Berlin etc whose words are very much of an era, Landesman’s  lyrics are for today, tomorrow and yesterday.

Moule, who spent six years working with the John Wilson Orchestra has four previous solo albums to her name. That she is the consummate artist goes without saying but let’s leave it to Fran Landesman to have the last word: 

“I got lucky meeting Simon. That he married Sarah Moule was a bonus. She’s the jazz singer par excellence.”

Lance