New Self-Titled Album by Eugenie Jones

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This Monday will see the release of EUGENIE, the sixth album by singer-songwriter Eugenie Jones. As might be expected, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for pre-ordering this item. However, as of this writing, the only available option is MP3 download, with one of the tracks, Peggy Lee’s “I Love Being Here with You,” available for preview listening.

The good news is that my reviewer status provided me with an opportunity to listen to all thirteen tracks on the album, six of which were Jones originals. The bad news is that none of those tracks left much of an impression on me. Fortunately, she approaches each tune with a rock-solid sense of pitch (which is more than I can say for her saxophonist Jessica Yang). Nevertheless, the lyrics for the originals tend to serve up little more than navel-gazing, while the scat-singing tends to honor the many decades of past improvisations without adding much (if anything) to the mix.

Now, to be fair, in reviewing past articles I see that, for at least the second half of last year, I built up a “track record” of disappointments with recent jazz vocal releases. Perhaps I should just avoid the genre for the sake of good manners. However, that track record was accumulated by releases that were “thrust upon me,” rather than requested. While I appreciate the efforts of promoters to cast as wide a net as they can, I hope they realize that not all of their respondents will provide the sort of promotion they seek!