Josie Falbo
You Must Believe in Spring
(Southport)
October 9, 2020
Reviewed by Joel Benjamin
The first thing that jumps out at you on Josie Falbo’s first song on her CD, You Must Believe Spring, is the title song (Alan & Marilyn Bergman/Jacques Demy/Michel Legrand). The lusciousness of her voice is matched by Cary Deadman’s fulsome, yet jazzy orchestrations reminiscent—in a good way—of old-fashioned ’50s pop and movie scores. This is the soundtrack for a romantic stroll in Central Park in the ’40s or a candlelit dinner at a checkered table-cloth eatery in the West Village in the ’50s.
Falbo sings in an almost sleepy mezzo that is warm and flexible, particularly when she scats in “A Night in Tunisia” (Dizzy Gillespie). The same glitter of her scatting is also apparent in her silvery “Joy Spring” (Jon Hendricks/Clifford Brown), which segues into a particularly laid-back version of Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing,” with its floral references substituting for expressions of loneliness.
She shows her virtuosity by going directly from a sweet “A Sleepin’ Bee” (Harold Arlen/Truman Capote) to a jaunty, knowing “Manhattan” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart)and from Duke Ellington’s gently lovely “Heaven” to a jumpy “Just You, Just Me” (Jesse Greer/Raymond Klager).
It all comes together in Richie Cole’s “Midnight in the Starlight Haunted Ballroom,” which explicitly refers to a number of period jazz and pop standards and masterful big-band musicians. She revels in painting the period with her voice.
The most sensual song on the CD is “Estate (Summer)” (Martino/Brighetti), a soulful bossa nova sung in Italian. It’s followed by, almost as a wake-up call, “Devil May Care” (Bob Dorough/Terrell Kirk) and then a slide back to thoughtfulness in “’Tis Autumn” (Henry Nemo), a coolly breezy bit of sweet, stylish late-night smoky nightclub fluff. That one is followed by her final song, a witty take on the sexy bossa nova hit “Tristeza” (de Souza/Lobo).
Her singing veers between two masters: Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald, combining the lushness of one and the freedom of the other, yet sounding somehow original in her many-layered vocal interpretations. She balances emotion and musicality quite imaginatively.
