Christopher Loudon, Jazz Times (USA)
June 2005
Not only does England’s Sarah Moule boast a stunning vocal spectrum-simultaneously tough and tender, warm and cool, sweet and salty-but she’s surely done more than any contemporary performer to preserve, protect and promote the stellar work of lyricist Fran Landesman. On her richly praised debut, It’s a Nice Thought, Moule showcased Landesman’s work with composer Simon Wallace.
Now she’s back with another half-nod to Landesman, whose songs fill seven of the 14 tracks on Something’s Gotta Give (Linn), the balance of the album devoted to the words of Johnny Mercer. Moule does a superlative job of interleaving such Mercer classics as “That Old Black Magic,” “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Trav’lin’ Light” with the poetic likes of Landesman’s misty “Save the Photographs,” wittily sophisticated “How Was It for You?” and self-indulgently desolate “Down.”
But the cherry on this rich layer cake is Moule’s closing rendition of Landesman’s most famous composition, the hauntingly gorgeous “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”
John Fordham, The Guardian
Friday November 26, 2004
This is the follow-up to British singer Sarah Moule’s It’s a Nice Thought, for the same label. That debut was devoted to the ironic and scalpel-sharp songs of London-based American lyric-writer and poet Fran Landesman, this one splits Landesman’s work and the Johnny Mercer songbook half and half.
As on the first album, Moule has surrounded herself with very classy British jazz musicians, with guitarist Jim Mullen making a reappearance, and bop trumpeters Mark Armstrong and Steve Fishwick joining the imaginative tenor saxist Pete Wareham over the immaculate drumming of Paul Robinson. There are therefore plenty of solos to reflect the jazz muse that fuels Landesman, and Moule’s crystal-clear tones and subtle pacing balance the improv input by taking typically intelligent care of the lyrics.
Her remarkable empathy with Fran Landesman’s songs (a double-act with pianist Simon Wallace) is still the strongest feature of this pretty traditional and straight-swinging set. Down, and Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, two of Moule’s most penetrating Landesman interpretations in live performance, are highlights.
Crescendo & Jazz Music
01 November 2004
Sarah Moule is one of the better singers among the new breed of British jazz vocalists, mainly because she improvises like a jazz perfomrner rather than just going through the motions like so many of today’s singers. Admittedly her intonation occasionally falters (for example, in the the opening track) but she securely negotiates the tricky intervals in a song like Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most.
This is one of the seven tracks on the album which are Fran Landesman songs (mostly co-written with Simon Wallace) – an area that Sarah Moule specialises in – and she is excellent at delivering Landesman’s bitingly witty lyrics. Listen to how she interprets the ironical words of Down, a savoury hymn to depression (though shouldn’t Sarah’s voice swoop downwards on the final note?). The Landesman songs are skillfully interspersed with standards which have lyrics by Johnny Mercer: a guarantee of brilliance.
The experienced backing group tightly delivers the well-judged accompaniments, sypathetically arranged by Simon Wallace. This is only Sarah Moule’s second album but she is already a name to conjure with.
The Irish Times
Interview, 18 Jan 2005
Notice how the album charts suddently seem to be full of excellent young women jazz singers like Stacy Kent, Clare Teal and Jane Monheit? You’re a better man than me if you can convincingly explain why there’s such renewed interest in the classic jazz repertoire of songs by writers such as Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart but with the revival continuing, English singer Sarah Moule, judging by the quality of her current CD Something’s Gotta Give, might just be the next singer of standards to find herself shifting albums by the truckload.
Oddly enough it was listening to a pianist, rather than to a singer, which first introduced Moule to the profound satisfactions of jazz. “I really fell in love with jazz when I listened to Thelonious Monk” she reveals. I bought a £3.99 CD called Portraits and I couldn’t believe how beautiful the sound was. It made me want to cry. And I just thought, “That’s it, I’ve found the music I will never get bored with. I had been listening to modern soul but I found it lacking in musical depth and I couldn’t find the meaning I was looking for in those kind of lyrics. So Thelonious Monk was the turning point and then I discovered fantastic writers like Lorenz Hart and Johnny Mercer.”
Moule’s current CD entirely comprises songs written either by Fran Landesman, many of them in fact composed recently in collaboration with Moule’s pianist husband Simon Wallace, or songs by Johnny Mercer. “Fran really crafts the lyrics.” enthuses Moule. “I am lyric-led as a singer and Fran’s got an interesting intellectual and emotional take on life. I don’t have a dark outlook on life and so I want songs that have some kind of optimisim in them and although Fran can be very dark she’s also very funny and I tend to see the funny side in what she writes. And she is increasingly optimistic now and I appreciate that – on this album her songs aren’t dark, just thoughtful and thought-provoking.”
The Johnny Mercer songs on the album include That Old Black Magic, Days of Wine And Roses and Jeepers Creepers. “There’s fantastic craftsmanship in his songs and they’re so natural to sings as well because he uses everyday speech but in a beautiful, elegant way. But I have to say that That Old Black Magic is a monster of a song. It’s hard to sing because it’s long and you’ve got a huge emotional range that you have to sustain. And obviously there are two absolutely stellar recordings of the song by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra so you feel like you have them looking over your shoulder when you record that. I thought a lot about the lyric and I tried to find my own angle on it and I hope I did – but it’s up to the people who listen to it to decide!”
Moule feels her singing style is continuing to mature. “An album is a record of a moment in time and then you carry on gigging and as you gig you develop what you’re doing and you get a new take on the music and the music you make just moves on. I’m constantly learning stuff about jazz and jazz harmony – it’s a huge learning curve”. Sarah Moule’s Something’s Gotta Give is on Linn Records. Interview by Trevor Hodgett
Dave Gelly, The Observer
14th November 2004
The lyrics of Johnny Mercer and Fran Landesman have a lot in common. Both have a dry wit and the lightest of touches, contrive to suggest emotional depths beneath an urbane surface, and with each of them the words fit snugly inside catchy melodies. For some time now, Sarah Moule has been the semi-official voice of Landesman’s work, especially the more recent material, written in collaboration with Simon Wallace. So who better to perform these 14 songs by two such similar writers? Moule gives outstanding interpretations of Mercer’s cheerful title number and the nostalgic Days of Wine and Roses‚ together with the Landesman-Wallace Down‚ and How Was It For You?
Jazz Review
January 2005
Singer Sarah Moule and her regular quartet – pianist/composer Simon Wallace, bassist Mick Hutton, drummer Paul Robinson – have done sterling work over the last few years bringing the songs of Fran Landesman and Wallace to the jazz public’s attention, and here they mix this repertoire with the work of another superb lyricist, Johnny Mercer, to produce a finely balanced, intelligent set. Moule is not a heart-on-sleeve emotion-wringer, but a thoughtful interpreter of a lyric, so Landesman’s unflinching self-scrutiny suits her well, and supported by some powerful guest performances from the likes of saxophonist Pete Wareham and guitarist Jim Mullen, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ is both immediately enjoyable and thought-provoking.