CD Review
Jamie Meyer-What You'd Call A Dream
1.
The Friendliest Thing 2. Miss Byrd 3.How Deep Is The Ocean4.
You Fascinate Me So 5. Stars and the Moon 6. My Favorite Year7.
Ship In A Bottle 8. It's The Little Things 9. The Lies of Handsome Men10. No Fear 11. I Got Lost In His Arms 12. Beyond Compare
13
. What You'd Call A Dream 14. My Mother Was A SingerExecutive Producer: Lee Lessack LML Music CD-107
All of a sudden, a warm and friendly mezzo wraps its eminently suitable self around the lyrics of the opening number and the listener is immediately beguiled by the fun and love of singing of Jaymie Meyer, here making her debut on solo CD.
In an ingenious selection of songs, Ms Meyer has managed to put together an array of both new and old material, much of which centres around the notion of the difference between what’s on the surface and what lies beneath.
Following the ‘The Friendliest Thing’, Maltby and Shire’s ‘Miss Byrd’, complete with trilling flute in the accompaniment, picks up the theme. Meyer creates a kind of latter day Miss Marmelstein, deftly contrasting a cool exterior with a sizzling core and loving every moment of getting to rhyme ‘Helsinki’ with ‘kinky’. A more serious mood is established with ‘How Deep is the Ocean’, but Meyer wisely avoids the ponderous treatment some singers give this standard and a quiet, contemplative ending is beautifully matched by a subtle accompaniment.
Each track on this album seems to highlight another sparkling facet of Meyer’s talent: crisp, clear enunciation of ‘Stars and Moon’; excellent vocal control, ranging between diminuendo and crescendo, in ‘The Lies of Handsome Men; immaculate phrasing in ‘Beyond Compare’; old-fashioned charm, capped by a superbly sustained ending, in Irving Berlin’s ‘I Got Lost in his Arms’.
Other highlights include an engaging performance of Amanda McBroom’s ‘Ship in a Bottle’, beautifully supported by Mia Wu’s plaintive viola and a sophisticated night club intimacy evoked in Portia Nelson’s ‘It’s the Little Things’, another song reflecting superficial calm masking a turbulent soul beneath.
But there’s already evidence that Craig Carnelia’s ‘What You’d Call a Dream’ is going to become Meyer’s song. With glorious joie de vivre she simply scintillates throughout the song, matching in sound the brilliance of the imagery of the sun shining like diamonds in a summer sky.
Blessed with energy, talent and personality, Meyer teases and pleases, fascinating us, as Cy Coleman put s it, as someone beneath whose halo may well lurk thoughts the devil might be interested to know!