Eleri Ward
Keep a Tender Distance
(Ghostlight Records)
March 30, 2023
Reviewed by Tracy Adams
A quick scan of the song titles makes it immediately clear that Keep a Tender Distance is a Sondheim tribute. What is not obvious is that on both this and her previous Sondheim album, Eleri Ward has created a whole new genre of music that she has dubbed “indie-folk Sondheim.”
As the album unfolds, one quickly begins to understand and accept this nomenclature. Ward’s sparce, guitar-led arrangements are designed to echo the isolation and longing —the tender distance—that Sondheim’s lyrics so often convey. This is more successful on some tracks than others. “Unworthy of Your Love” benefits from this treatment, but “Marry Me a Little” does not; the opening “Merrily We Roll Along” pulls you into the ride, but “Agony” misses the namesake anguish of the original.
Because of the tracks’ heavy
reliance on acoustic guitar, some of the subtleties of Sondheim’s musical lines
and harmonies are lost. However, anything lost musically is more than made up
for by Ward’s apparent adoration for his lyrics. As a longtime Sondheim
devotee, I am thrilled when a singer lights up one of his lyrics with new
meaning. There are several such instances on this recording.
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Ward’s voice has a break that would defeat many singers, but she is a master of her instrument and leaps across her registers with the control of an elite ice skater, making the difficult seem easy.
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Her arrangements demonstrate her own self-awareness of this, and she smartly maneuvers between her gentle upper voice and her more powerful lower notes in ways that accentuate, not simply accommodate, her interpretations.
There may not be any single cut on this album that will become a definitive version, but it is certainly an enjoyable and valuable addition to the Sondheim discography. Sometimes it is nice to have a break from all of the Broadway babies.
