At only 25, this half-Haitian, half-Guadeloupean vocalist is winning every jazz award going, despite rejecting the usual tricks of the jazz virtuoso. On her second LP, there’s no scatting or replicating horn solos. This is more like heightened music-theatre, enunciated with authority and polished with elaborate sonic costume changes. Salvant can warble in French and growl her way through old blues belters, but she’s even better at recasting standards. On Wives and Lovers, she turns Hal David’s simpering lyric into a demented psychodrama, with pianist Aaron Diehl’s scribbly accompaniment sounding like a cartoon soundtrack. On The Stepsisters’ Lament from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s little-known Cinderella, musical she empathises with the comical wails of the ugly sisters (“why can’t a fella ever once prefer a solid girl like me?”). It chimes with her original songs, all heart-tugging poems on unrequited love. It’s an exhausting but thrilling voyage.
