Recording of the Week, Cécile McLorin Salvant, 'Ghost Song'

Active in the world of vocal jazz from an early age – 8 years old, to be exact – American vocalist and songwriter Cécile McLorin Salvant has had plenty of time to slowly hone her craft. Having found early success after winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010 – as well as self-releasing her first record Cécile shortly before – the competition opened her up to a recording contract with Mack Avenue Records, whom she stayed with for four albums. It was this partnership that birthed celebrated albums like 2017’s Dreams and Daggers, a near-two hour recording featuring both live recordings from the Village Vanguard and studio takes. While since her self-titled debut her albums have consisted mostly of standards by Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and others, Salvant has always included her own works in the proceedings, but not as much as on her latest recording Ghost Song – featuring seven originals alongside the five interpretations of jazz standards, pop songs, and traditional folksongs. Marking her label debut on Nonesuch Records, Ghost Song is a chronicle of nostalgia, ghosts, and yearning, as well as an exploration of Salvant’s multi-faceted musical personality. But despite the seemingly dour subject matter, it’s not all moody tunes; a self-described ‘eclectic curator’, Salvant’s performances range from instrumental works, to upbeat peppy musical theatre-esque numbers, to, yes, the odd smoky ballad.

Salvant deliberately sequences Ghost Song as a musical mirror – the record both opens and closes with a sean-nós, a form of traditional Irish song for unaccompanied vocals, the first of which she weaves in Kate Bush’s 1978 hit ‘Wuthering Heights’, itself inspired by the gothic classic that Salvant spent a significant portion of the pandemic poring over, ultimately choosing to pay tribute to it in musical form with her own personal twist. The closing track ‘Unquiet Grave’ similarly uses the sean-nós form for the fifteenth-century English folk song, wrapping up the ghostly narrative with a haunting closer. Within the album, though, Salvant takes us through many twists and turns – while the peppy beginning of the second track ‘Optimistic Voices’ causes something of a tonal whiplash, the second half ‘No Love Dying’ has her singing on a beautifully subdued ballad, with some intricate instrumentation thrown in for good measure. The similarly gentle and lovesick ‘Moon Song’ takes a similarly traditional approach, with Salvant accompanied by a simple piano trio, while ‘The World Is Mean’ serves as more of an upbeat, jaunty pace-breaker towards the end of the record.

The ‘mirror’ is flipped around the midpoint of the album, the unsettling ‘I Lost My Mind’ built around a cyclical pipe organ melody and dissonant vocal harmonies – Salvant’s musical interpretation of life in lockdown. Indeed, much of this record was written in isolation – not only does Salvant showcase her many musical indulgences, but also gets to flex her chops as a storyteller – by the time we get to ‘Unquiet Grave’, the positions are switched, having begun the album on ‘Wuthering Heights’ being haunted by a past lover, Salvant now haunts his grave. Despite the overtly supernatural subject matter, Ghost Song ends up making for Cécile McLorin Salvant’s most personable work to date, even while being her most diverse.