Word: peyroux
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MADELEINE PEYROUX...
...formula is unchanged from Peyroux's previous albums: a few chugging, countrified originals, a French café song and the rest standards and contemporary folk-rock. But who's complaining? One might wish Peyroux would go full throttle more often, but there's no arguing with her sly, teasing rhythm on originals like I'm All Right or the aching conviction she brings to ballads like Joni Mitchell's River (a duet with k.d. lang). If this is sameness, let's have more...
...only thing she's fixating on at her local coffee spot. The 40-year-old mother of two from Culver City, Calif., also satisfies her aural cravings there, frequently picking up a compilation CD or maybe a new album from the likes of jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux. "I won't make a special trip to a record store," she says, riffling through a stack of discs. "But I've bought more than 20 Starbucks compilations, and they're awesome...
When her parents divorced and she moved to Paris with her mother at 13, Peyroux says, singing on the street taught her "how to enjoy music" for its own sake. But after she had moved to New York City and brought out a CD, Dreamland (Atlantic), in 1996, she lost the joy. The mixed blessings of success, the pressure to come up with a second album, the strain that required surgery on her vocal cords were all too much. She dropped out. For five years, she spent time with her family, traveled, explored Christianity and tried...
...thing Peyroux decided was that, for her, singing was "empowering" and "uplifting." A couple of years ago, she began easing back into the business. And now? In back-to-back performances at the San Francisco Jazz Festival recently, and with a long string of U.S. bookings ahead of her, there was no mistaking her conviction as she swung through an old Holiday number: "In a happy setting/ We're getting/ Some fun out of life." And that's a true story. --By Christopher Porterfield