Madeleine Peyroux - Secular Hymns album review: passionate and heartfelt

Since she arrived on the international scene some 20 years ago, an apparently fully-formed descendant of Billie Holiday, US-born, Paris-raised vocalist Madeleine Peyroux has always mixed her own material with classic jazz and blues.

Her seventh release takes her current touring set-up, a pared back trio with guitarist Jon Herrington and bassist Barak Mori, through a entire set of classic covers, ranging from blues standards such as Got You On My Mind and If The Sea Was Whiskey, to more recent gems from Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt.

If music is religion, she reasons, then these are my hymns. They’re the sort of songs that can sound hollow and insincere in the wrong hands, but Peyroux delivers every word like her life depends on it.

[ madeleinepeyroux.com ]