Johnaye Kendrick
Flying
Self-released
It’s been four years since vocalist Johnaye Kendrick’s debut Here. A collection of self-penned love songs, Kendrick’s first album was, in many ways, a first love. Brave but withdrawn, pure yet troubled, passionate though reluctant to give everything away, her voice’s warm radiance and songs’ stark colors proved, as the bard once wrote, that love is like smoke, “made with the fume of sighs.”
Ascending to more rarefied air, Kendrick returns along with her band, D’Vonne Lewis (drums), Chris Symer (bass), and Dawn Clement (keyboards) for her sophomore album, Flying. With her new release, Kendrick has certainly gone further with her art than ever before, singing as she does in the mellow title track how “she looked back at her wings/and knew where she belonged.”
More confidant, defiant, and ebullient, Kendrick flourishes in a set of ear-catching originals and ardent standards. Songs such as “You Two,” a paean to family, “Secrets,” a snappy comedown of someone close, and “Boxed Wine,” on the cabals of domestic intimacy, expand her cast of characters. Still, Kendrick plays herself best on old chestnuts like “It Could Happen to You” and “The Lonely One,” as well as a transformative version of John Mayer’s “3×5.”
Let’s not forget her supporting actors. Clement, who provides her own songwriter’s croon to backing vocals, commands acoustic and electric keyboards with her finely serpentine textures, captivating with Brubeckian orchestral flourishes on “The Very Thought of You.” Symer’s solo sings on “Secrets,” but the bassist really cruises with the unhesitatingly hip Lewis. The pair re–stitches rhythms in a funky retwinning of “I’ve Got No Strings,” shifting the rhythmic emphasis onto the three while Clement’s chords jump giant steps.
“How I love my liberty/there are no strings on me,” Kendrick sings knowingly on the same track. If jazz means freedom, then listeners could learn a thing or two about liberation from Kendrick, whose style only shines brighter the darker her music gets. More than Romeo and Juliet, the musicians on Flying stage for us nothing less than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If music be the food of love, play on!
–Ian Gwin
