My One and Only Thrill

Melody Gardot’s debut grew from recordings she made while recovering from a traffic accident. For this second album, Larry Klein produces, and Gardot writes with string arrangements already in mind. The result has the fragrance and underlying current of fine film music, yet carries a blues depth that seems astonishing in a singer still early in her career—or perhaps something close to the finest chanson. This is music that makes you feel the night.

Gardot’s statement that beauty lies between the notes offers a clue to the album’s most captivating quality. Her voice is wonderful, but the spaces between her singing, the dark piano and the ghostly strings hold a form of emotion that music alone can reveal. These arrangements give silence an unusually powerful role.

Her restraint is never weak or tentative. It makes the moments when that restraint briefly dissolves all the more intense. At times her singing creates an almost weightless impression, as if she were not quite present in the room. Perhaps surviving so close to the boundary between life and death helped her find that elusive expression.