Elizabeth Shepherd

RewindLinus ***

Sometimes it takes another composer to find something new in old tunes. Toronto vocalist and keyboardist Elizabeth Shepherd usually writes her own material, but pregnancy left her with no time to spare so she decided to revisit the songs that had been formative for her. The result is a pleasantly idiosyncratic set of standards and chansons turned into lounge jazz classics. Among them are Love for Sale, taken at a loping half-time funk; the much-covered Feeling Good, reanimated in a loose-limbed seven groove; and Born to Be Blue, which sounds like the Andrews Sisters hooked up with Prince for the night. Shepherd’s band can really play, and

classic keyboards such as the Wurlitzer invest her imaginative arrangements with a laid-back hipness that is, let’s face it, what we all thought we were signing up for in the first place.

[ elizabethshepherd.com ]