Madeleine Peyroux - Let's Walk

(Just One Recording, 2024)

All Eyes Media

Madeleine Peyroux notes the twentieth-eighth anniversary of recording with the release of Let’s Walk. The release of her breakthrough recording Careless Love (Rounder Records, 2004) brought appropriate comparisons to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Edith Piaf the intervening years have witnessed a solid evolution into a more organic exploration of the roots of American music. Her delivery and performance veer somewhere between the early polished down-home approach of Norah Jones and the present informed authenticity of Melissa Carper (sans the rural twang).

Let’s Walk is Peyroux’s ninth release, her first in six years, and the first where she co-wrote every song with longtime collaborator Jon Herington. The recording is the singer’s most varied yet integrated recital so far. She deftly blends jazz, folk, gospel blues, Americana, chamber pop, Latin rhythms, and not-a-little playful humor into her heady roux. The songs are personal with themes of loss and accompanying acceptance and forgiveness through compassion and the realization that we are all doing our best.

Peyroux takes all her disparate influences and genres, updating them while remaining faithful to their spirit. The title cut features a deep gospel dive full of call-and-response in the spirit. “Blues In Heaven” sneaks out from beneath “Stormy Weather” and “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do.” There is not a shred of imitation in the entire sent, only a recognition of the vintage music that came before and how it mingles with the present.