Spotlight CD Review
John DePalma- The Song is Mine
Finding a good opening number
for a cabaret set can often be the hardest part of putting the whole
performance together. Thus other singers may envy the talent of John
DePalma who solved the problem by sitting down with his musical arranger
James Followell and writing
‘The Song is Mine’. The perfect introductory song, this, for through
its lyrics DePalma not only gets the chance to warm up vocally as the
music builds, but he also delivers a neat little tract on the nature of
cabaret itself. There can have been few more succinct expositions of the
art encompassed within a single song.
From this auspicious start, we
hear DePalma flex his vocal prowess further with a powerful rendition of
Newley and Bricusse’s ‘Feelin Good’. The heat is then turned up as
Al Jarreau’s ‘Love is Waiting’ segues into DePalma’s take on what
he calls ‘disco love’, an energetic ‘Love is in the Air’ that
probably had the audience of Don’t Tell Mama’s (where this was
recorded live) wishing they’d donned their white suits and gold
medallions before heading out to West 46th Street.
DePalma is a master at changing
the mood of the moment, and his sweet medley of the Bergmans’ ‘It
Might Be You’ and Menken and Feldman’s ‘Take Care of My Heart’ is
a fine example of how a well-crafted, honest performance can captivate an
audience with its touching simplicity.
This CD could be studied as the
epitome of the well-constructed cabaret set, with its variety of styles,
moods and pace alternately charming, soothing and invigorating the house
through songs new and old, familiar and unfamiliar. DePalma’s swinging
Arlen medley virtually encompasses all these attributes in one track
before a haunting Randy Newman double (One More Hour and When She Loved
Me) adds yet another layer of emotional intensity. DePalma can both spin
silk and forge steel in his vocals, and his ability to vary the texture of
a song marks him out as a cabaret artist of rare quality.
The highlight of the album is
surely the heart-rending ‘I Won’t Mind’, a song that speaks to all
who wonder what it would be like to pour love into the soul of one’s own
child and who, for whatever reason, know they never will. There are
moments in the best cabaret shows when the audience is arrested by the
experience, they hold their breath in recognition of what is unfolding and
at the end they applaud more than the music, they embrace the fact that
something hitherto ineffable has finally found expression. In this track,
DePalma achieves just such a moment and thereby adds just a little more to
our understanding of our common condition.
Accompanied throughout by Andy Eulau on bass and Tom Partington on drums, as well as by the above-mentioned Mr Followell, DePalma completes the show with an intelligent take on Tom Waits’ ‘Shiver Me Timbers’ woven into Nilsson’s ‘I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City’ as well as two further songs that only serve to confirm that John DePalma is definitely a name for which to keep both an eye out and an ear open.