The spare arrangements of The New Bossa Nova get a lot right. You can measure all the tiny tonal changes in the medium-range voice of Luciana Souza, a Brazilian-born jazz singer. Her pianist, Edward Simon, may never have played more airily. The saxophonist Chris Potter improvises in short, jabbing figures; he's artful, and can make you think of Stan Getz on his own jazz-bossa nova crossover records (maybe a Stan Getz who's been listening to a lot of Wayne Shorter).
But the repertory here is, with a few exceptions, West Coast pop singer-songwriter music, including songs by Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and Michael McDonald. An interesting exception is Elliott Smith; a less interesting exception is Sting. At any rate it's here that the problems arise.
The producer is Larry Klein, a gray eminence of adult pop and also Souza's husband; their judicious choice of songs mostly avoids the super-famous or overplayed. But a fair amount of the romantic lyrics are profound or analytical in a way that seems a little too leaden for bossa nova.
Coupled with an occasional hyperprecision in Souza's singing, this all begins to make the project lose its stability. (The arrangement of You and the Girl, written by Souza and Klein, builds a perfect atmosphere of restful unease. Then the word vainglory appears.) The album is properly introspective; perhaps it just isn't sweet enough.
TIME ON EARTH
Crowded House
ATO Records
July 10
Ten years after disbanding, Crowded House was reunited last year by its songwriter, Neil Finn. Partway through recording a solo album, Finn reconvened the bassist Nick Seymour, a founder of the band in 1985, and the keyboardist and guitarist Mark Hart. One member was absent: the drummer Paul Hester, who suffered from depression and committed suicide in 2005. That's one reason the reunion album, Time on Earth, is suffused with thoughts of mortality and mourning.
Yet Crowded House has always been a pensive band, balancing melancholy and consolation in songs like its 1986 hit, Don't Dream It's Over. In the new Don't Stop Now, Finn sings, Give me something I can write about/Give me something I can cry about. With Matt Sherrod on drums, Crowded House sounds like its old self (and like Finn's solo efforts). The music harks back to the folk rock and Merseybeat of the 1960s, backing straightforward melodies with guitars and piano.
The reunited band doesn't pretend a decade hasn't passed. The 14 songs here are the thoughts of a grown-up songwriter. Silent House, written with the Dixie Chicks, speaks to an aging relative whose memory is deteriorating; English Trees contemplates the aftermath of a long-ago breakup. A few songs are upbeat, like the ironically jaunty She Called Up and the guardedly optimistic Even a Child. But Time on Earth is filled with ballads and thoughts of how transient life is, nowhere more so than in the aching, shimmering A Sigh, which acknowledges, No changing the story now.
The reunited Crowded House is to perform Wednesday and Thursday at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan.
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