As my review of Harrop’s concert at Chichester Jazz Club in March this year made plain, my enthusiasm for this most accomplished and soulful singer knows no bounds. Recorded in Los Angeles six months earlier, The Path Of A Tear was produced by ex-Joni Mitchell associate Larry Klein, who appears on tasteful electric bass on several tracks.
The late-Crusaders-like rolling smoothness of the opening Beautiful Fools, where Anthony Wilson (elg) fashions a typically elegant solo, might for some conjure fears of a venture into smooth jazz. But The Path Of A Tear is no smooth-jazz sellout. Rather, (if you will pardon the expression) it’s a truly top-dollar offering. To cite but one apposite detail: relish the combination of mellow phrasing and cutting edge which distinguishes Wilson’s later excellent solo on Hurt.
Caressed rather than swamped by one consummately fashioned arrangement after another, Harrop’s wondrous voice and phrasing, her magical way with the delivery of a lyric, light up a well-programmed sequences of affecting songs, pitched deliciously between jazz, gospel and folk, blues and soul. Hear her float across and into the heart-tugging threnody that is Goodbye or dig deep into the gospel-and-blues sprung Whiskey Or The Truth and the potent, sometimes searing A Love Like This.
Some of the material here, such as Whiskey Or The Truth and You’ll Never Be Lonely In Soho, featured in that Chichester March concert. Six further characterful originals co-written by Harrop are fleshed out well by Leonard Cohen’s Traveling Light, Leon Russell’s terrific, wryly humorous If It Wasn’t For Bad and Steve Earle’s very different but equally arresting Goodbye.
The result is a release which can only serve to enhance Harrop’s burgeoning reputation as one of the finest singers around today. Catch her – whatever the context – whenever you can!
Discography
(2) Beautiful Fools; (1) Whiskey Or The Truth; A Love Like This; (2) Traveling Light; (1) The Path Of A Tear (Le Chemin D’Une Larme); You’ll Never Be Lonely In Soho; If It Wasn’t For Bad; Too Close To The Sun; Hurt; Goodbye; (2) Stay Here Tonight (50.08)
Harrop (v) with (1) Anthony Wilson (elg, g); Jim Cox (p, elp, Hammond B-3 org); David Piltch (b); Victor Indrizzo (d, pc). (2) as (1) but Piltch out, Larry Klein (elb). Los Angeles, September 2023.
Lateralize LRO20CD
