Singer/songwriter
Jennifer Warnes
celebrates her 50th anniversary as a recording artist with
Another Time, Another Place
, her first recording since 2001's
The Well
. Since the 1990s,
Warnes
has worked only when she's wanted to -- a decade passed between
and its predecessor,
The Hunter
. In this century, she has lent her voice to recordings by
Sonny Landreth
,
Chris Hillman
Leonard Cohen
, and his son
Adam Cohen
.
and longtime collaborator
Roscoe Beck
(
Cohen
's bassist and music director and her own producer on
Famous Blue Raincoat
and
), began working in Austin and Los Angeles in 2015. But a string of profound losses -- a niece, two sisters, a longtime manager, ex-boyfriend, her dog and
-- sidetracked the sessions several times.
Aside from or perhaps because of all that tragedy,
offers a stellar reflection of
the interpretive singer. She co-wrote only one tune here, the lilting, Americana road song "The Boys and Me" with
Michael Smotherman
. The rest are covers that range from country to jazz to pop, all delivered with her sensual, expressive contralto. She opens with a completely revisioned version of
Pearl Jam
's "Just Breathe." Amid a weave of strings, upright bass, acoustic and electric guitars, and poignantly played B-3 and French horn, she offers the song's melody with bittersweet knowledge and its projective lyric as if singing into a mirror for reassurance. A breezy and bluesy read of the jazz standard "Tomorrow Night" -- cut by everyone from
Lonnie Johnson
to
Bob Dylan
to the Texas Hill Country's own
Johnny Nicholas
-- features
Beck
's strolling upright bassline atop drums (
Vinnie Colaiuta
), percussion (
Lenny Castro
), and
Jim Cox
's subtly swelling Hammond as she leans hard into the tune's elegant swing.
Mickey Newbury
's "So Sad" is delivered with warm, rounded edges as
Greg Leisz
's pedal steel winds around the grain in her smoky vocal to underscore each moment of loneliness and pain in the wake of a lover's departure, and those of friends who've shuffled off this mortal coil.
convincingly weds jazz, cabaret, and musette in her version of "I See Your Face Before Me."
Landreth
appears on resonator and electric slide guitar on a swampy yet altogether cinematic take on
Ray Bonneville
's "I Am the Big Easy," complete with a laid-back second-line rhythm. Two tracks later she offers "Back Where I Started," another country-esque soul number by
the Tedeschi-Trucks Band
. The tension between emotional conviction and sweetness in its lyric is a perfect match for
' unflinching honesty and vulnerability. While
Marcus Hummon
's "Freedom" wasn't written for
, it could have been. Backed by an all-star choir that numbers
Ruthie Foster
Blondie Chaplin
in its quintet, it relays the notion of freedom as both a state of abundance and an illustration of loss. As a result of these intimate performances,
is return to the world after a prolonged period of solitude and grief.
offers these songs with the same aplomb, grace, discipline, passion, and dignity that she has displayed her entire career, and imbues these songs with new shades of meaning in the process. ~ Thom Jurek