Canadian jazz singer Holly Cole played some of her favorite holiday material along with her standard show of quirky jazz-tempo numbers at Yoshi's new jazz club in San Francisco. Cole ran through numbers from her latest (self-titled) CD, including a jazzed-up arrangement of Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini's "Charade," a beautiful "This House is Haunted" and her original song "Larger Than Life." Cole's voice is husky and smoky à la Peggy Lee with a peculiar Canadian twang reminiscent of k.d. lang, that allows her sing a countrified, almost bayou blues melody like "Down, Down, Down" or the slow and deliberate handling of Tom Waits' tune about the sea (Cole is from Halifax, Nova Scotia) titled "Shiver Me Timbers." Surrounded by excellent backup musicians including Colleen Allen on saxophones and clarinet and Mark Rogers on bass, Cole made even the most trite Christmas song s swing with style (I'd Like You for Christmas," "Santa Baby," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"). She knocked the Andrews Sisters' "Jing-a-Ling, Jing-a-Ling" out of the park with her pure joy and exuberance. Cole showed her incredible talent on Tom Waits' "Train Song" that simply must be heard live, and her encore of "Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday." I'd really like to see Cole next time she's in town sans the special holiday numbers. She's a fantastic jazz singer with a knack for arranging non-jazz material into very special Cole nuggets.

Steve Murray
Cabaret Scenes
December 17, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org