Phrases

"The musical side of composing - creating melodies, reharmonizing music - has always come pretty easy to me," says Jeff Baker. "But in attempting lyrics, I always felt burdened by not being Joni Mitchell. How could I express myself without sounding trite or silly? I found that if I gave myself prompts, I could create stories around them and find my voice as a lyricist. My aim was to tell stories in which people could hear their own experiences." The 'prompts' on his fifth album to date come from the likes of Pablo Neruda (on 'Neruda'), J.D. Salinger (on 'Salinger') and Salvador Plascencia (on 'People of Paper'). But though Baker takes the lead as singer and principal songwriter here, this is an ensemble disc that takes full advantage of the supporting septet, further supplemented here and there by a string quartet. The result is state-of-the-art contemporary vocal jazz, erudite but with ears open to the best of modern-day pop writing in the manner of Kurt Elling.