Listening Page

The antithesis of a flashy singer, she doesn’t scat or radically reharmonize songs. Rather, she’s an inspired interpreter of lyrics who luxuriates in lustrous melodies. Possessing a pliably warm, unsentimental sound and a persuasive sense of swing, Wexler gives every song its due, leaving you to wonder why the object of her affection hasn’t become a bona fide standard.What I See, her fourth album, is Wexler’s most confident release yet, a project that showcases her close creative ties to her longtime pianist/arranger and co-producer Jeff Colella. A consummate accompanist and improviser, he seems to find Wexler’s comfort zone with every chart, as each beautifully crafted arrangement adds depth and subtext to her already emotionally incisive vocals. She’s particularly well served by some of the Southland’s most expressive soloists, who augment her stellar working trio with bassist Chris Colangelo and drummer Steve Hass.With the album’s opening track, Wexler makes it clear she’s operating in a rarified realm, smoothing out the edges of the King Pleasure’s stiff-upper-lip anthem Tomorrow Is Another Day, a melody the vocalese pioneer caged from Stan Getz’s first recording of the folk song “Dear Old Stockholm.” Is it my imagination, or does the exquisitely hollow tone of Bob Sheppard’s mahogany-dark bass clarinet suggest that contra Pleasure’s lyrics good times might not be around the corner?At her best on sensuous ballads, Wexler is perfectly at home on Joyce’s seductive plea Convince Me, which contains the irresistible couplet “love is so quixotic/an erotic treasure chest,” and Carlos Lyra’s A Certain Sadness, which she delivers with all the requisite saudade despite an effective arrangement that avoids the song’s original bossa nova setting.Wexler pulls off the neat feat of bringing to mind Blossom Dearie on Bob Haymes’ They Say It’s Spring while making the giddy song her own. Similarly, she gently evokes the classic Richie Havens recording of singer/songwriter Jerry Merrick’s Follow, turning the folky anthem into a sleek and deeply affecting jazz vehicle.When it comes to precedents, Wexler has the field to herself on her roiling mid-tempo rendition of John Williams’ unaccountably overlooked The Long Goodbye, a song put to brilliant use throughout Robert Altman’s 1973 film of the same name (a caustic updating of Raymond Chandler’s last great Philip Marlowe novel).As if to leave no doubt that she’s fully capable of inhabiting a good old standard, she closes the album with two pre-World War II chestnuts, the jaunty A Kiss To Build A Dream On, forever linked to Satchmo, and Laughing at Life, one of those songs that probably would have been forgotten if not for Billie Holiday.  It’s an apt choice for a closer, as there’s a touch of Lady Day’s magic at work in What I See, an album defined by a penetrating musical vision that consistently finds hidden jazz treasures.

Andrew Gilbert is a Berkeley, Calif. writer who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News.