Glamoured

1	Fragile 4:37
2	Sleight Of Time 4:12
3	I Want More 4:21
4	If Loving You Is Wrong 5:29
5	Lay Lady Lay 5:08
6	Crazy 3:02
7	What Is It? 3:19
8	Heaven Knows 5:06
9	Honey Bee 4:48
10	Broken Drum 4:14
11	On This Train 4:37
12	Throw It Away 4:36

Barnes & Noble

Since she hit it big in the mid-‘90s with Blue Light Til Dawn and New Moon Daughter for Blue Note, Cassandra Wilson has covered and composed repertoire that spans New Standard pop, roots music, Brazil, and jazz, blurring the lines between genres with an instantly identifiable tonal personality and flawless musicianship. She addresses a similar mix on Glamoured, her 14th solo release. For covers, Wilson Afro-Cubanizes Bob Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay”; adds an even more delicate wash to Sting’s “Fragile”; transforms Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” into a reflective meditation on human foibles; glides over a rootsy web of guitar, bass, and washboard on “Honey Bee” by fellow Mississippian Muddy Waters; and parses the inspiring message of Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw It Away” in duet with bassist Reginald Veal. Wilson seamlessly juxtaposes the covers with her own originals, rich with wordplay, metaphoric allusion, and compelling melodies -- it’s a fair bet that some (“I Want More,” “Heaven Knows,” and “Broken Drum” for starters) will enter the Pop canon as grist for ambitious singers of the future. Where on past albums Wilson’s stylistic eclecticism occasionally seemed mannered and forced, on Glamoured -- with help from pop-savvy producer Fabrizio Sotti and creative input from virtuosos like guitarist Brandon Ross, harmonica player Gregoire Maret, and drummer Teri Lyne Carrington -- she sounds wholly at one with her material, channeling the spirit of reverie that the Gaelic title (meaning “to be whisked away) implies. Ted Panken

All Music Guide

Cassandra Wilson has garnered a deserving reputation for her soulful, visionary reads of songs by legendary composers old and new, from Robert Johnson to Van Morrison. On Glamoured, Wilson composed half the album, and her songs are as provocative and deserve the same weight of grace critically afforded her covers. She uses her trademark fluid, smoky delivery to redefine songs such as the old soul nugget "If Loving You Is Wrong"; the poignancy it was written with tells of a woman lost in the delirium of a forbidden love with a married man. The ache and euphoria in her voice shot through with producer Fabrizio Sotti's stunning acoustic guitar interplay is nearly overwhelming in its emotion. Her Afro-Caribbean read of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" is a different -- and perhaps better -- version than the original. It doesn't weep and it doesn't get bogged down in its melody; it is shot through with a smoldering drone and eclectic polyrhythms that reinvent it harmonically. Willie Nelson's "Crazy" is kissed with the same elegance and soul that her version of "Tupelo Honey" was. But it is on Muddy Waters' "Honey Bee" and Abbey Lincoln's "Throw It Away," which closes the album, that Wilson offers her greatest gift: that of an improvisational blues and jazz singer who understands these songs to be living embodiments of still developing traditions. Recorded in Jackson, MS, her hometown, these songs are shot through with mischief; a controlled, winking sensuality; greasy, rollicking, and syncopated rhythms; and melody lines to kill for. Wilson's songs, particularly "I Want More" and "What Is It?" with their funky backbeats and jagged verses, are seemingly new forms for the pop song, while "Broken Drum," "Sleight of Time," and "Heaven Knows" could have been written for Nina Simone, such are their out-of-the-ages, folk-infused jazzy cadences, but Wilson makes them unclassifiable in terms of any time but the present and she is working out new forms for color, phrasing, and rhythmic interplay for her voice. Glamoured, like its Gaelic definition, is the sound of the supernatural in a human being. Thom Jurek