Sundae + Mr. Goessl
When You’re Smiling
Self-released
Perhaps because they are sovital, standards are often jazz’s Achilles’ heel: if poorly interpreted, then you’re unfaithful to tradition; if too plainly, then you lack personality.
Voted Best Jazz Act of 2017 by Seattle Weekly, Sundae + Mr. Goessl—our local Les Paul-Mary Ford combo of award-winning vocalist Kate Voss and tireless guitarist Jason Goessl—strikes the perfect balance between tradition and inspiration in their fifth release, When You’re Smiling.
The album’s pared-down treatment of such classics like “My Blue Heaven” and “Bye Bye Blues” doesn’t yearn nostalgically for the sound of a studio past, but channels the seamless musicianship and well-turned performances of the early studio era. (Though “standards” doesn’t exclude gems like Sonny Bono’s spy-film nugget “Bang Bang.”)
Goessl, of course, knows the guitar from Freddie Green to Grant Green, audible, for example, when he vaunts his impressive pedal point arrangement of “Embraceable You.” Voss’s voice, too, remains unaffected while consistently inventive: her careful attention to intonation, such as her unexpected coloring of vowels, itself retunes familiar expressions.
When You’re Smiling is music that anybody with two ears can appreciate, brimming with bright optimism and warm expression. Though also accompanied by percussionists Adrian Van Batenburg and Sam Esecson, Voss and Goessl especially shine when their chemistry as a duo takes center stage, such as on “S’wonderful,” recovering the many shades of affection and passion within these songs, and, apparently, between the music of these two performers as well.
–Ian Gwin
