Natalie Prass' remarkable phrasing amid the lush jazz balladry of "Christy" — the way her whisper of a voice floats above plucked harp and strings as Prass hisses out the titular name — sounds like it came out of a massive Los Angeles recording session in the 1960s, with Marty Paich, the legendary orchestral-pop arranger, at the helm. It wasn't. It was recorded in 2011.
Prass' self-titled debut was an unexpected gem among albums released this year — a collection of soulfully sung, artfully arranged, simmering pop songs and breakup ballads nestled against a velvety pillow of strings, brass, woodwinds, and background vocalists. It harked back to the combined feathery pop and gritty soul of chanteuses like Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield, and the classic old-school studio vibe of recording joints like Stax and American Sound Studio in Memphis, and Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound.
"I knew that I wanted to do an album with real musicians, real players, and I'm obsessed with old Dionne Warwick records and really wanted to do something that sounded kind of like those," Prass says. "But I didn't have the skills to write anything like that."
Prass did have the contacts, though. An old friend was Matthew White, who runs Spacebomb Records in Richmond, Virginia. White's known for his love and knowledge of big productions and expert musicians. "He rallied up a whole bunch of people, like Trey Polland, who did the string arrangements," Prass says, "and they just took it above and beyond what I imagined."
The trick for Prass when she performs at Outside Lands is bringing such a big production to an outdoor stage. Actually, it's not much of a trick at all. Prass won't be recreating the album live. That was a decision made when she and her musicians first began talking about a tour.
"We all were a little nervous about that before the first rehearsal," Prass says. "Like, how are we gonna do this?" What they decided to do is strip the songs down to their bare essentials, with jazz drummer Scott Clark, bassist Michael Libramento, and guitarist Polland letting silence do some of the heavy lifting. "The three of them are such prolific musicians that we're able to take these lush recordings and make them very minimal."
Minimal or grand, Prass songs are strong enough that they've made the transition to clubs since January. "Prass' live presentation at this point doesn't include the orchestral arrangements from the record, making her performance a testimony to the quality of the songs she has written," Consequence of Sound wrote of her February show at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles. We'll have to wait and see if those songs can withstand the wind, sunshine, and chatter of thousands spending a day in Golden Gate Park.
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