Reviewed by Eric Saeger
I was prepared to rain the wrath of God on this LP for lots of reasons. For one, this is an obviously upper-crust-coddled German lady who lives in Canada (it really couldn’t get more hedge-your-bets-bohemian than that, let’s face it). Two, she gave herself a pretty stuffy mononym, and, three, her last album, despite its soundtrack cameos on Ugly Betty, was a tour de force of off-key 40s-torch singing that presented critics with an easy tackling dummy. With all this said (oh, she’s also disjointedly photogenic, looking hot half the time and like your worst tranny butterface the other) (oh, also, the album is titled Me), I can’t really throw this new album out of bed. She’s doubled-down on the Billie Holiday steez, her sourball Maria Muldaur/Toni Tennille likenesses sticking to the low end and staying in key for most of the time, making for some really great lounge-jazz at times, even if the aspirations are never lofty. Keeping in mind these are original tunes, she gets a free pass for blowing the vocal experiment she attempts in ‘Sisters in Spirit’ – she’s got guts for sure, which counts for a lot.
Grade: B+
