LORRAINE FEATHER

THE GREEN WORLD

Relarion Records

Feather has successfully achieved recording artist status with her voice and lyricist credits for the past twenty-five years.  The music on this album encompasses ‘Rock’ with an occasional jazz tendency threading through these arrangements like a tailor’s precise needle. You can barely see the stitching. The first melody is composed by her producer, Eddie Arkin. It features an unusual melody and the lyrics are wordy, but this establishes Feather’s style. She enjoys in-depth storytelling and she’s a wordsmith. Their first song, “The Green World” is very well produced.  I play it twice, the second time reading along with her lyrics that are included in the album’s accompanying booklet. I find her style of singing and writing to be very much like musical theater. Each song unwinds an emotional story, with her unfolding lyrics. The listener will hear Lorraine Feather singing us her stories.  She sometimes incorporates spoken word in between the songs. It’s very theatrical.

On the tune “Another Layer of Nuance” Eddie Arkin shows once more what a wonderful composer he is.  The dancing violin adds interest and imagination to a tune based in the blues.  Feather’s original lyrics always bring food for thought.

“Splat” is jazz from start to finish. For me, it’s the star of this show. The saxophone of Marcus Strictland is full of pizazz and very soulful. Feather’s lyrics are creative and cute.  The music is composed by the great Shelly Berg, who also plays piano on this arrangement. This is a ‘Lambert, Hendricks & Ross’ type of vocal jazz. It swings in a scat-kind-of-way.

The entirety of this production is built on the way Lorraine Feather matches her lyrics to the composer creations. They are all composers we know and love, like Russell Ferrante or the masterful pianist and bandleader, Arturo O’Farrill.  The final song Feather sings as a duet with O’Farrill, piano and voice. Some of her lyrics are borrowed from a poem by Wendy Cope.  The starkness of Feather’s voice against the backdrop of O’Farrill’s grand piano is tenacious.

Lorraine is not a jazz singer, but rather a lyricist and lover of music who sings.   On this album project, she weaves in a variety of genres, sounding just as comfortable on a rock and roll tune as she does on a ballad, or singing the blues. Her vocals sound like a hundred other songwriters or singers, with no particular style or sound to claim their own. Still, Feather has a good voice, good pitch, and at times there is a whisper of Blossom Dearie influence, but she is no Chris Connor, no Betti Carter, Aretha Franklin, Sarah Vaughan or Julie London.  She is Lorraine Feather, giving us a Broadway musical, one-woman-show, captured on disc.

Her band includes: Lorraine Feather, lead & background vocals/lyricist/spoken word/co-producer; Russell Ferrante, Shelly Berg & Arturo O’Farrill, piano/composers/arrangers; Edie Arkin, piano/ composer/co-producer/electric guitar/arranger; Michael Valerio, fretless 5-string electric & acoustic bass; Chuck Bergeron, bass; Ray Brinker & Dafnis Prieto,  drums; Grant Geissman, electric & steel-string acoustic guitars; Charlie Bisharat, violin; Zach Dellinger & Joanne Pearce-Martin, theremin (an electronic instrument); Jacob Braun, cello; Wade Culbreath, marimba; Marcus Strickland, saxophones.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil