Anaïs Reno - Lady of the Lavender Mist
(Club 44 Records, 2025)
New York-based jazz singer and composer, Anaïs Reno, released her debut recording, Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno Sings Ellington & Strayhorn (Harbinger, 2021) at 16. She followed that with the import, At PizzaExpress: Live In London (PX, 2023). Moving to Club 44 Records, the singer releases a keenly conceived collection of love songs, Lady of the Lavender Mist. Reno is a singer who full arrives with this recording. A carefully studied grasp of her material tempers her youth handsomely. Her light touch and sexy sense of humor inform this excellent recording.
The solid rhythm section of guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist David Wong, and drummer Joe Farnsworth supports Reno on a punctiliously curated nine selections that should represent the best vocal recording this year. If the opening mashup of Yves Montand’s “Les Feuilles Mortes” with the sturdy likes of “Autumn Leaves” is any sign, it will be just so. Reno ratchets up the pathos by singing both in the original. When she switches to English, she dispatches the old words with a casual flip of her hair and a sensual slur that raises the temperature to just beyond comfort. The rhythm section and arrangement provide Reno all she needs to infuse the diptych with all the drama one could want.
And that is just the opening piece; many splendors remain. The singer delivers “When Lights Are Low” with a honey/heroin sweet succulence that is one-million pounds-per-square inch seduction. As elegantly depraved in a most refined way is “When Lights Are Low,” “Gravy Waltz” is earthy, humid, and languid as making love on a summer afternoon, expertly propelled with carnal grace by Farnsworth's adroit drumming. “I’ll Remember April” is the antithesis of “Autumn Leaves” Reno, waxing sunny and warm. Reno's duet with Bernstein on Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight" forms the album's spiritual center. This vocalist, supported by these musicians on this recording, achieves perfection in this song.