Cabaret Scenes CD Review

You look at the photo on the cover of this album and then you listen to the voice that flows from the speaker of the CD player, and you try to connect the two, but it seems nearly impossible. Here’s this singer of Asian descent (and raised in Australia) eyeing you seductively, and then there’s a vocal quality that seems like a cross between Rudy Vallee and Leon Redbone. Singing classic standards against a musical setting that’s straight out of a ’50s jazz club (you’d swear that you can almost hear the clinking of glasses in the background). I can’t remember the last time I encountered such a thoroughly original artist as Julian Yeo or an album that’s as utterly entertaining as his Old New Borrowed Blue. If one didn’t look at the list of song titles before a first hearing, Jesse Gelber’s "Boston In the Rain" that opens the set would lead one to think this was going to be a collection of unknowns. But after that instantly old-time new creation, Yeo (with Gelber on piano and providing the musical trio’s arrangements) launches into 10 standards with another original by Gelber (the deliciously ’40s-sounding "Stand In Line" that could’ve easily been an Astaire-Rogers big-screen song-dance showstopper had it been around during their day) turning up two-thirds of the way through. With instantaneously infectious and enticing selections ranging from a sly "Let’s Misbehave," pulsating "Just One of Those Things" and strutting "Stepping Out With My Baby" to a baker’s half-dozen other treats tempting the ears, Old New Borrowed Blue is absolutely irresistible.

Jeff Rossen
Cabaret Scenes
September 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org



	Julian Yeo Old New Borrowed Blue
You look at the photo on the cover of this album and then you listen to the voice that flows from the speaker of the CD player, and you try to connect the two, but it seems nearly impossible. Here’s this singer of Asian descent (and raised in Australia) eyeing you seductively, and then there’s a vocal quality that seems like a cross between Rudy Vallee and Leon Redbone. Singing classic standards against a musical setting that’s straight out of a ’50s jazz club (you’d swear that you can almost hear the clinking of glasses in the background). I can’t remember the last time I encountered such a thoroughly original artist as Julian Yeo or an album that’s as utterly entertaining as his Old New Borrowed Blue. If one didn’t look at the list of song titles before a first hearing, Jesse Gelber’s "Boston In the Rain" that opens the set would lead one to think this was going to be a collection of unknowns. But after that instantly old-time new creation, Yeo (with Gelber on piano and providing the musical trio’s arrangements) launches into 10 standards with another original by Gelber (the deliciously ’40s-sounding "Stand In Line" that could’ve easily been an Astaire-Rogers big-screen song-dance showstopper had it been around during their day) turning up two-thirds of the way through. With instantaneously infectious and enticing selections ranging from a sly "Let’s Misbehave," pulsating "Just One of Those Things" and strutting "Stepping Out With My Baby" to a baker’s half-dozen other treats tempting the ears, Old New Borrowed Blue is absolutely irresistible. Jeff Rossen Cabaret Scenes September 2007 www.cabaretscenes.org