Amber Weekes
Pure Imagination
(Amber Inn Productions)
December 3, 2019
Reviewed by Alix Cohen

Amber Weekes (new to me) has a light, jazz-oriented voice that often rides above the accompaniment on its own amicable track. While this works greatly to her benefit on selected material, some choices, like “After You’ve Gone,” lose emotional emphasis.

Weekes has a feel for Oscar Brown, Jr.
online pharmacy https://www.childhealthonline.org/scripts/js/zoloft.html no prescription drugstore
(Create a dedicated CD to him?) A bass-centric “The Snake”—cue faint finger snap—arrives with insinuating but, not overplayed hush, along with a cool, muted trumpet. “Brown Baby” is half spiritual, half lullaby. This time the bass and the vocal are bowed, elongating like a meaningful caress.

“When He Makes Music” (Marvin Fisher/Jack Segal) is both sultry and curiously innocent due, perhaps, to the timbre of Weekes’ voice. Its smoky cocktail-lounge sound is enhanced by an unexpected violin. It sounds personal.

Lindy hop punctuated by the piano and zoot-suit-era bass carries “Gotta Be This or That” (Sunny Sklar). The vocalist is flirty, insouciant. Duke Ellington/Leonard Gaines’ “Just Squeeze Me (But Don’t Tease Me)” bounces as effervescent swing. The vibraphone is a welcome addition.
https://mannadew.co.uk/wp-content/languages/new/lasix.html
Weekes sings a smile.

Paul Simon’s “Gone at Last” is a CD highlight. A New Orleans marching band number, its infectious rhythm and layered instrumentation work wonderfully. The sense of hip-swinging forward movement is buoyed by vocal back-up, wah-wah and whooping horns, and muffled claps.

I don’t get “Pure Imagination” (Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse) as a samba or Barry Manilow/Johnny Mercer’s “When October Goes” as a cha cha. (It’s successfully repeated with silky horn and arced, drifting phrases in a bonus track.) Here, the accompaniment seems in opposition to mood. Nor, to me, does the very singular ache of “The Way He Makes Me Feel” work as a duet.