www.musicweek.com INTERVIEWMELODYGARDOT THAT SWEET MELODY
RIGHT The Absence: the new album is out on May 28 (via Decca). Single Amalia is out on May 21.
04.05.12 MusicWeek 45
Decca-signed jazz star gives her thoughts on the record business and her new album The Absence…
INTERVIEW BY TINA HART
I
nternational jazz sensation Melody Gardot is sitting in rainy London, chatting to us about why her forthcoming album, The Absence, is a livelier
affair than its predecessor. Just as well she didn’t record it in drizzly Blighty:
the LP, released on May 28, is inspired by her travels to tropical climes - including Brazil, Hawaii and the Mediterranean. It’s her first album since 2009’s My One and
Only Thrill – and according to Gardot, it saw her acting like a “crazy kid” with producer Heitor Pereira to create a record that is a “musical passport to a sunnier place”...
It’s been more than three years since you released your last album. What have you been up to since? We toured for about a year and a half and then took the same amount of time off. The last album fell immediately after the one before had its run around the world – it was pretty swift and intense. I was in a bit of a neuroses when I came off the tour. I realised I had gone really hard, really heavy and fast and needed to pause for a moment. I always say that writing comes in a moment of great pause.
Can you kind of describe the vibe of The Absence? Very spirited. It represents a year-and-a-half of my life. It’s not like the music we’ve done before - and that’s on purpose. I don’t ever intend to make a record the same twice. By the nature of the way the music sounds you can see the places that I’ve been.
Without any explanation you can a feel a bit of the sound and joy, like a passport to a sunnier world.
It’s a less balladic sound than the last album. Why is that? I spent so long touring the last record. I pretty much mastered the sense of a ballad and I didn’t want to have to necessarily repeat that. I forced myself to experience something different which brought about for me, for the first time, a feeling of joy. Especially in South America in Brazil, people who live underneath the beaming sun – there’s so much joy. It made my heart well up to the point of exploding. Music was the thing that connected all of us
despite not being able to speak the same language. Behind that, it was unification - and even now on the record like I can touch other languages and feel comfortable because they came through the music in a very natural way. You have different tastes and flavours - like Carmen Miranda meets Eartha Kitt meets something dirty like a street musician combined with all the inspiring women that brought about this music. This is a female record for sure, I feel very feminine at this point in my life.
You worked a lot with Heitor Pereira (inset) on the record and said he’s an amazing crazy genius – what did that craziness entail? I asked to use leaves and things like that as sounds. We used some pretty crazy things. One of the sounds is this [flicks nails], the simplicity of this, just for the percussion. Simple, little things. Most of what we used are not traditional
ABOVE
Melody-packed: Gardot’s previous works: Worrisome Heart (2008) and My One And Only Thrill (2009)
sounds, just things from around the world, recordings from different places. As a musician [Pereira] is an incredible writer
and guitarist. He’s just like perfectly crazy out of his mind, and so am I. So when you put two people in a room like that, we’re not like you would think. We’re actually relieved because we’re both thinking outside the box so much. I’ve been told by a lot of people that we were a bit like “aah!”. When he was a little bit excited to do percussion on a lampshade, so was I. It was great because we were like kids – laughing, dancing. The outtakes are the greatest part and they’re not out; they’re fantastic [laughs].
“I’d rather be at the top of a mountain than at the top of the charts because you’re near to a beautiful set of stars – the only ones I’m interested in” MELODY GARDOT
Do you have any particular ambitions for the record? The only thing I aspire for is to be able to create beautiful things. I was at a radio station in London this week and they were talking about the charts, I was like, “Are they singing or racing, what’s happening?!” I’d rather be at the top of a mountain than at the top of the charts because you’re near to a beautiful set of stars – the only ones I’m interested in. Music is such a personal
journey for me. Now having found some joy I’m also coming into first steps of
feeling like I’m becoming a woman. It’s very strange. I heard it the first time I heard myself singing with Charlie Haden – I sounded different. I had the confidence to present myself nude for the album cover photoshoot (see above). I was free, at home, at peace in that moment.
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