Music Matters - Melody Gardot

Melody Gardot - Worrisome Heart, Universal Classics and Jazz
Download Now - Worrisome Heart, Some Lessons (Heck just get the whole album for $5.99 at iTunes)

Melody Gardot's sultry jazz vocals are unobtrusive yet deeply affecting. Worrisome Heart, Gardot's first full length album, is the kind of record that you put on for ambient sound, but it's also the album you put on to steady an emotional crisis of the heart. For Gardot, love is real and terrifying. The fragility and urgency of life may be more apparent to Gardot, who survived a serious bicycle/car collision when she was a teenager; she was on the bike. The accident resulted in injuries that require her to use a cane, wear sun glasses all the time, and wear earplugs to treat her Hyperacusis/Tinnitus. She's walks on a fragile frame and has hyper-sensitive senses but the music she makes is sturdy and never overbearing. The musical styling shies away from sugary poppiness and cleaves hard to pure Jazz. The characters in her songs are venerable and exposed, but safe in the hands of Jazz which creates a community of exposed instruments and players. This is one of those rare works of art that meets you where you are and doesn't ask questions.