Renée Fleming - Haunted Heart

The husky yet limpid, entirely unoperatic sound Fleming cultivates for this album is distinctive and original, not the result of mimicry. But if you need an image to conceptualize what you'll hear, think Anita Baker or a leanersounding Patti Cathcart: deep, warm, breathy, but with deceptive freedom and clarity. Paired with the sprawling pianism of Fred Hersch and the effectsladen guitar of Bill Frisell, Fleming's singing stands strangely out of time, neither old nor fully modern. It is decidedly old fashioned in many ways, a return to the frontandcenter vocalism of the 1940s and 1950s an album about songs, and about singing. But the eclectic track list including famous songs by Lennon and McCartney, Bill Carey, Stevie Wonder, Gustav Mahler (yes, that Gustav Mahler), and Stephen Foster could only be a product of postmodern thinking, in which boundaries of time and style become increasingly meaningless.

That eclecticism is a great strength of Haunted Heart. Hearing Fleming deliver a torch song to beat all in "You've Changed," only to follow it up with the joyful "My Cherie Amour" and then a stylishly downtempo rendition of "In My Life" gives new legs, and fresh context, to all three. But that inclusiveness eventually catches up with Fleming, and the second half of the album begins to wander as she inserts songs from the Classical repertory. Mahler's "Liebst du um Schönheit" seems lonely clothed only in sparse guitar accompaniment; and Emile Paladilhe's "Psyché" suddenly transports Fleming back to the soprano register the only time on the entire album when you'll be reminded of Fleming's concert singing.