Much like songbird Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux spent her teenage years busking the busy streets of Paris. Just like the ‘little sparrow’, Madeleine befriended the city’s street musicians and made its Latin quarter her first performing stage. Years later, Peyroux would cite iconic Piaf as an influence on her music and record a rendition of the classic La Vie En Rose, soulfully capturing the tune’s romanticism and melancholy.

Eight albums and 22 years since her debut Dreamland, Peyroux continues to challenge the confines of jazz, venturing into the fertile fields of contemporary music with unfading curiosity.

Peyroux’s new album, Anthem, finds the singer-songwriter collaborating with writers/musicians Patrick Warren (Bonnie Raitt, JD Souther, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Lana Del Rey, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Brian MacLeod (Sara Bareilles, Leonard Cohen, Tina Turner, Ziggy Marley) and David Baerwald (Joni Mitchell, David and David, Sheryl Crow), who are also the basic rhythm section players on the album. Together, they cast a sober, poetic, and at times philosophical eye on the current state of the world.

Produced and co-written by Larry Klein, the album came to life during the pivotal 2016 US elections, with the writers absorbing a “constant stream of news” over many months. The “consciously not too preachy” songs, fuse Peyroux’s, at times political outlook, with glimpses into her personal world. Honed and patiently refined with fellow writers they mix the public with the personal, striking that perfect equilibrium of dark humour and compassion.

Anthem is an album born out of the team being “together in one room, musing over world events and letting personal experiences spark ideas”. David Baerwald’s sadness over the passing of poet John Ashbery, ignited thoughts of much admired figures lost over the years and paved the path for All My Heroes. Baerwald’s loss gave rise to feelings of awe at these figures’ trailblazing ability to guide and “light fires in the shadows”, but also brought to light their very human vulnerability.

Inspiration for the evocative Lullaby, written by Baerwald, Klein, MacLeod, Peyroux and Warren, came from “the image of a solitary woman in the midst of a vast open sea singing to her child, or possibly herself, as she faces the chasm of the world.” With engaging empathy, the song paints a haunting picture of the displaced person’s desperation, as she is tormented by memories of “a time before the war”, in a boat paddling towards the unknown.

Anthem weaves the colourful stories of people confronting life's challenges in a multitude of ways. With pathos and a hint of irony it laments over financial tribulations in Down On Me, speaks of disappointment and unfulfilled dreams in the bluesy Ghosts of Tomorrow and delivers a scathingly poignant social commentary in The Brand New Deal. Coming ten years after Bare Bones, the singer-songwriter’s previous album of original songs, Anthem finds Peyroux wiser with finer articulation powers. Inspired by her idol Leonard Cohen’s ability to “suffer for the work, but still present the listener with just a friendly thought”, Peyroux sends a spiritual but clear message of hope, optimism and resilience in the face of a turbulent reality.

There are two covers in this album. Paul Eluard’s WW2 poem Liberté, and the title track, Leonard Cohen’s monumental Anthem, which also marks Peyroux’s third interpretation of the iconic poet’s work.

Soon becoming Peyroux’s “personal anthem”, Cohen’s soulful masterpiece “tied together all the stories on the record”, with uncanny relevance and topical worldly observation.

It was Cohen’s astonishing ability to tap into the human psyche and “make you think about things without forcing you into it”, that was the underlying thread throughout the project, leading to a more fluid style of writing, “that is about saying something rather than saying everything.”

Anthem’s lighter tunes include On My Own and On A Sunday Afternoon and 70’s sounding Party Tyme which “has some darkness to it.”

A key track on the album is Paul Eluard’s poem Liberté which came to Peyroux’s attention when a family friend requested she contribute a song to the documentary On the Tips of One’s Toes (Sur La Pointe des Pieds), telling the story of her gravely ill son and the family dealing with his fatal illness (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy). A well-known poem in France and recently set to music by French rocker Marc Lavoine, “Liberté was already in the air following the Paris terror attack”. It came up for Peyroux and Klein as they were trying to put music to a sequence in the documentary showing the young boy going on daily outings and activities. It evoked questions about the parents’ ordeal of “living with the knowledge that their son will not live a full life”, and triggered thoughts of “life’s greatest questions about mortality, overcoming adversity and man’s place in the grand scheme of things”.

The 21-verse poem was edited down to fit the album’s format and its stanzas adapted, before Peyroux and Klein wrote their original composition. Delivered in French and encompassing the entire human experience, Liberté begins with the lines “On my school notebooks, On my school desk and the trees”, to convey the essence of childhood and growing up. It goes on to touch on adulthood, romantic loneliness, and the many facets of human life, before finally speaking of illness, death and recovery. “With every verse Eluard mentions different places, imaginary and real where he would write 'the name’ but the name itself remains a mystery until the all revealing last line “I was born to know you, To name you, Liberty”. Under Klein’s sensitive production, the arresting poem assumes an enchanting folksy simplicity, with only Klein’s acoustic guitar and Warren’s atmospheric synth strings to accompany Peyroux’s mesmerising voice.

Anthem is Peyroux’s “biggest project to date”, with the artist investing many months of hands-on involvement in the studio, “exploring processed sounds and editing in post tracking. Special in that it was written with the group of musicians/writers who also played on it, “this album was about discovering the original songs as they were being recorded” and mastering the courage to “let the songs choose their own path.” The new album includes several songs bearing Peyroux’s distinctive, instantly recognizable style including On My Own and Sunday afternoon, but Anthem’s spirit was that of exploring new styles whilst resting safe in the knowledge that “if you are loyal to yourself, there should always be a thread running through your music.”

Twenty years after her recording debut, Dreamland, Madeleine Peyroux continues her musical journey of exploring beyond the ordinary with Secular Hymns, a spirited and soulful masterwork of loping, skipping, sassy, feisty and sexy tunes delivered in a captivating mélange of funk, blues and jazz. With her trio that had been touring together for two years—electric guitarist Jon Herington and upright bassist Barak Mori—Peyroux set out to record in a live setting a collection of songs that have their own hymn-like stories of self-awareness and inner dialogue, a communal consciousness and a spiritual essence.

“Music has been our spiritual life, so I think of these as hymns, secular hymns—songs that are very individual, personal, introverted.”
- Madeleine Peyroux

Rounder Records is pleased to announce the release of Keep Me in Your Heart for a While: The Best of Madeleine Peyroux, the debut anthology of the critically acclaimed, singer-songwriter’s nearly 20-year career. The album includes favorites not only from Peyroux’s releases with Rounder, but also tracks from her Atlantic and Decca/Emarcy catalogs. Additionally, the compilation includes one previously unreleased recording—the collection’s title track and Warren Zevon cover, “Keep Me in Your Heart”—which appeared in 2011’s independent film Union Square. Liner notes by former Atlantic Records A&R man, Yves Beauvais, who discovered Peyroux, complete the package.

Track Listing

Disc One:

  1. Don't Wait Too Long 3:11
  2. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome 3:25
  3. (Getting Some) Fun Out Of Life 3:13
  4. Between The Bars 3:43
  5. I'm All Right 3:28
  6. La Vie En Rose 3:19
  7. Half The Perfect World 4:22
  8. Dance Me To The End Of Love 3:56
  9. Smile 3:59
  10. Once In A While 4:00
  11. The Summer Wind 3:56
  12. Careless Love 3:50
  13. Guilty 3:52
  14. Desperadoes Under The Eaves [Extended Version] 5:20

Disc Two:

  1. Changing All Those Changes 3:09
  2. J'ai Deux Amours 2:55
  3. River Of Tears 5:20
  4. The Things I’ve Seen Today 3:42
  5. Damn The Circumstances 4:36
  6. La Javanaise 4:11
  7. The Kind You Can't Afford 3:58
  8. Bye Bye Love 3:28
  9. Walkin' After Midnight 4:49
  10. Standing On The Rooftop 5:46
  11. Instead 5:12
  12. Keep Me In Your Heart [First Audio Release] 3:32
  13. This Is Heaven To Me 3:12

When Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music was released in the summer of 1962, it caused quite a stir. For those of us who already worshipped Ray Charles and were initially exposed to the album through its first single “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” the massive, very white choir that sang the first lines of the song made us cringe. It convinced us that our idol had sold out to the major label mentality. To purists with a tendency toward musical genre profiling, Ray Charles had no business giving credibility to redneck hillbilly music.

This wasn’t the first time Ray Charles had crossed the line in his pursuit of a natural fusion of the music he heard growing up. He dipped into boogie woogie for “The Mess Around.” But when he blended country blues and urbane rhythm & blues with Gospel music in mid-fifties hits like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” and “I Got A Woman,” he added blasphemy to his list of crimes against humanity. Now he wanted to cross the color line with the music of the deep South. Clearly, he didn’t know his place.

Oh yeah, then there was the general public who came out in droves to make Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music  Ray Charles’s most successful album to date rather than his most controversial. After all, genius is half talent and half impeccable instincts and Ray Charles was a genius. By September, he was in the studio cutting Volume 2. And everyone came around. The second single from the album was “You Don’t Know Me,” an eight-year-old song by Canadian country singer Eddy Arnold, who delivered the original version in his unemotive, plaintive style. Ray Charles, on the other hand, elevated it to its status of instant standard with a raw, poignant, heart-breaking reading.

What we all eventually realized in hindsight was that this album, like no other Ray Charles recording before it, represented an artistic freedom that most recording artists over the past fifty years have routinely enjoyed. Nobody wanted Ray Charles to sing country & western songs… except Ray Charles. When he reluctantly left Atlantic Records where his musical artistry and style emerged and took shape, he signed a revolutionary recording contract with ABC-Paramount in 1960 where he retained artistic control of his sessions and ownership of his masters. It was unprecedented and a major blow to the label system that foisted bad songs and mediocre arrangers on singers in search of the almighty hit. In the process, he used his artistry and genius to break down musical categories and barriers and legitimize cross-pollinating, genre-bending music.

A year later, the ‘60s (the era, not the decade) began in earnest with the assassination of Medgar Evers and Governor George Wallace’s attempt to block the entrance of two black students at the University of Alabama in June, the Civil Rights March On Washington in August, the church bombing in Birmingham which killed four children in September and the assassination of President Kennedy in November. A succession of assassinations, protests, abuses of authority and riots defined the next seven years as race, war and class divided a country. Bob Dylan articulated our outrage and Ray Charles healed our wounds and fed our souls. Oh yeah, 1963 was also the year that Billboard combined its mono album and stereo album charts. Heavy stuff.

By the time Larry Klein discovered Modern Sounds, he was 12 and it was 6. Modern Sounds was already a classic and its hits were golden oldies. By that time, the massive white choir didn’t sound so alien; it had just become an ingredient in the final work.

Larry found himself revisiting the album frequently over the next four decades.

In an inspired moment, he thought a re-examination of this album would be an ideal project for Madeleine Peyroux because “she comes from the same places – jazz, country and blues.” His concept was in no way intended to replicate the instrumentation or arrangements or style or sequence of the original album. Trying to beat Ray Charles at his own game is the true definition of “Born To Lose.”

Georgia-born and Brooklyn and Paris-bred with a New Orleans pedigree, Madeleine Peyroux grew up in a household rich in Southern culture and yet vehemently against the ignorance and racism associated with that region. Born in 1974, her childhood home was filled with the sounds of Fats Domino, Fats Waller, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Buddy Holly to name a few. “Ray Charles was a part of that mix and an important one,” she explains, “but I never knew that album per se. I knew many of the songs as part of anthologies alongside tunes like “Georgia On My Mind” and “Hit The Road, Jack.” But Ray Charles had a huge impact on me and even more so when I moved to Paris at age 11 because those American artists were so much more revered there than they were in the United States in the ‘80s.”

Madeleine is an artist whose sensibility and eclectic musical mix make for magnificent story-telling. And the songs that Ray Charles chose for Modern Sounds are, above all, stories. Wisely, Madeleine felt that the infusion of newer but like-minded material was essential to this project and gems like Warren Zevon’s “Desparadoes Under The Eaves” and Randy Newman’s “Guilty” attest to her impeccable instincts, as does the resurrection of a wonderful and obscure Buddy Holly song “Changing All Those Changes.”

Larry Goldings, Dean Parks, David Piltch and Jay Bellerose form the group that provides the spare, tasteful backing arranged by Larry Klein for each song. Vince Mendoza’s string arrangements on six tracks are beautiful, unpredictable and perfectly appropriate to the tone and mood of each song. If there is a direct musical link to Ray Charles, it’s Goldings’s soulful, in-the-pocket keyboard work with the same kind of perfectly placed notes and use of space that were part of Charles’s signature.

Larry Klein is a producer who knows his artists well and creates hand-tailored environments that suit them perfectly. When Madeleine takes “Bye Bye Love” slower than usual or “Take These Chains” faster than most, these are not decisions of style, but fundamental choices in her approach to the material. This is an album of music that is letter-perfect but coursing with blood, and it is as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. And like the Ray Charles album to which it pays homage, it reinvents everything it touches.

 

Michael Cuscuna
November 2012

Renowned for her interpretive song skills, the vocalist followed her creative muse on 2009’s “Bare Bones” by challenging herself to write a full album of her own compositions. Now with “Standing On the Rooftop” (Emarcy/Decca), she delves deeper into her reinvention, not only writing the bulk of the songs, but pushing past any preconceived notions about her music and daring herself to expand her sonic template.

Appearing on the album

Madeleine Peyroux
Christopher Bruce
Charlie Drayton
John Kirby
Me'Shell Ndegeocello
Glenn Patscha
Marc Ribot
Mauro Refosco
Jenny Scheinman
Allen Toussaint
Patrick Warren

Track list

  1. Martha My Dear (J. Lennon / P. McCartney)
  2. The Kind You Can't Afford (M. Peyroux / B. Wyman)
  3. The Things I've Seen Today (M. Peyroux / J. Scheinman)
  4. Fickle Dove (M. Peyroux / J. Scheinman)
  5. Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love (W. Auden / M. Ribot)
  6. Standing on the Rooftop (D. Batteau / M. Peyroux)
  7. Threw It All Away (B. Dylan)
  8. Love in Vain (R. Johnson)
  9. Don't Pick a Fight with a Poet (M. Peyroux / A. Rosen)
  10. Meet Me in Rio (M. Peyroux)
  11. Ophelia (D. Batteau / M. Peyroux)
  12. The Way of All Things (M. Peyroux)

Madeleine Peyroux's fourth album isn't the normal mix of standards (contemporary or traditional) with a few songs of her own composing; each of the 11 tracks is a new song written by Peyroux, usually in tandem with producer Larry Klein or a guest. Still, she appears in her usual relaxed setting, with a small group perfectly poised to translate her languorous vocals into perfect accompaniment — organist Larry Goldings, pianist Jim Beard, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, plus producer Klein on bass, Dean Parks on guitar, and Carla Kihlstedt on violin.Peyroux is not only a great interpreter of songs, she also knows how to write in what might be called the old-fashioned way, the type of song with a universal, direct, emotional power that became a rarity during the late 20th century.

Appearing on the album

Madeleine Peyroux
Larry Klein
Vinnie Colaiuta
Dean Parks
Jim Beard
Larry Goldings
Carla Kihlstedt
Luciana Souza
Rebecca Pidgeon

Track list

  1. Instead (J. Coryell / M. Peyroux)
  2. Bare Bones (W. Becker / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  3. Damn The Circumstances (D. Batteau / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  4. River Of Tears (L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  5. You Can't Do Me (W. Becker / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  6. Love And Treachery (J. Henry / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  7. Our Lady Of Pigalle (D. Batteau / L. Klein / M. Peyroux)
  8. Homeless Happiness (J. Coryell / M. Peyroux)
  9. To Love You All Over Again (D. Batteau / M. Peyroux)
  10. I Must Be Saved (M. Peyroux)
  11. Somethin' Grand (L. Klein / M. Peyroux / S. Wayland)

Produced by Larry Klein
Recorded and mixed by Helik Hadar
Recorded at Henson Studios, Hollywood, CA and Market Street, Santa Monica, CA.
Assistant engineer: Nicolas Essig
Mixed at Market Street, Santa Monica, CA
Mastered by Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Hollywood, CA
Production Coordinator: Cindi Peters for Worlds End (America) Inc.
Chart preparation: Mark Shilansky

This time around, Peyroux focuses primarily on songs written by artists from her lifetime, including Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Fred Neil. (more…)

With the release of her long awaited follow-up album, Careless Love, Peyroux's potential as an artist is truly realized. Her smoky voice and knowing delivery make each song her own, whether she's singing vintage tunes by W.C. Handy and Hank Williams, or contemporary songs by Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith. Producer Larry Klein (Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin) weaves strands of acoustic blues, country ballads, classic jazz, torch songs and pop into a vibrant fabric that is both timeless and thoroughly up to date, with Peyroux's arresting vocals always front and center. (more…)

Madeleine's debut album from 1996 offers a wide variety of swing standards, originals, and hints of country and folk music. Her supporting cast, which changes on each selection, includes a restrained James Carter on tenor and bass clarinet, Marc Ribot on dobro and guitar, trumpeter Marcus Printup, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, and violinist Regina Carter. (more…)

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