New music from a unique jazz vocalist, with a turn toward original songwriting
Madeleine Peyroux was born in Athens, Georgia and grew up singing on the streets of Paris, where she moved with her French teacher mother. Her voice sounds a bit like Billie Holiday's, but her style is her own. Peyroux's 1996 debut album, Dreamland, was released on the Atlantic label and drew raves; Time called it "the most exciting, involving vocal performance by a new singer this year." Over half a dozen albums, Peyroux has never given up her classic influences but has moved steadily in the direction of personal songwriting and a distinctive artistic voice. Her new release, "Standing on the Rooftop," contains eight original songs, plus covers of music by the Beatles, Robert Johnson, and Bob Dylan, and a setting of a W.H. Auden poem. "I have been building on the relationships I developed in co-writing, and something new has taken hold of me," Peyroux says. "This project is meant to be a wider dreamscape than previous recordings. I'm interested in exploring tougher sounds, even ugly sounds ... trying to find something more raw than the voice that I have now and in the accompaniment that I have become used to."
