Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 08/22/2006
Eliane Elias has moved further and further into mainstream
pop in recent years, and
Around the City continues that course. Having begun as a member of the
jazz ensemble
Steps Ahead, she ventured tentatively into solo recordings in the late '80s, maintaining her solid commitment to
jazz while never failing to bridge her adventurous tendencies with the Brazilian traditions that were her birthright. On recent albums she's been redefining herself, shifting from a role as a strictly instrumental musician to building a rep as a vocalist who (singing in both English and Portuguese) accompanies herself on piano and occasionally lets loose with a startling, stunning solo.
Jazz and Brazil still figure largely into the makeup of her music (
"Slide Show," "Chiclete Com Banana"), but sometimes just barely.
Elias radically reinterprets
Bob Marley's
"Jammin'" as a nearly unrecognizable dance tune here, but she reclaims
Beck's
"Tropicalia" for Brazil -- a natural for
Elias to cover, her take is faithful to the original's structure and brings to it a
samba touch that
Beck could only approximate. Her cover of
Tito Puente's (by way of
Santana)
"Oye Como Va," on the other hand, sticks to the blueprint.
Elias is writing more these days, too, to mixed results.
"We're So Good," co-penned with co-producer
Lester Mendez and songwriter
Lauren Christy, sits firmly in
Norah Jones territory, waiting for radio to discover it, while the album's two closing numbers,
"Another Day" and
"Segredos (Secrets), Pt. 2," both written by
Elias solo, exude a melancholy bluesiness that confirms her growing talent as a
cabaret-style
singer/songwriter while leaving the listener with another hint that this artist is undergoing a continuing transformation.
~Jeff Tamarkin, All Music Guide
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