“Play me something I haven’t heard before,” Diane says. We’re in the car, on the way to lunch, and I’m not at a loss for options—though, since she’s not into ambient jazz, the options aren’t quite as wide as they otherwise would be. No matter. Old-school jazz with a modern twist is always a good fit—so long as it’s done well.
Swedish jazz singer Lena Swanberg’s If You Could See Me Now turns out to be a perfect pick. Released a little more than a month ago, it’s a late-night, headphones-listening delight, smoky and sultry a la Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee one moment and frothy Things Are Swinging-like fun the next, thanks in part to the syncopated beats and rhythms of drummer Lars Skoglund and bassist Peter Forss, as well as the bleats of Jonas Kulhammer’s tenor sax and star-like twinkles of Britta Virves’ piano. The album isn’t just a showcase for Swanberg’s inviting vocals alone, in other words, but the combo that accompanies her. “Skylark,” the classic Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer number, is a good case in point:
As evidenced by the track list, the songs are all standards; about the only thing missing from these renditions are the pops and crackles of decades-old vinyl. “All My Tomorrows,” the much-covered Sammy Cahn-Jimmy van Heusen tune first sung by Frank Sinatra in 1959, is given an upbeat arrangement that captures the song’s joie de vivre, especially when Virves goes to town with a deft finger dance atop the piano’s keys.
Swanberg’s story begins when she was a kid and her parents encouraged her to take up violin; that didn’t stick, but the love of music did. She began singing with big bands, studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and released a well-received album of originals (The Art of Staying Young and Unhurt) in 2012. In the years since, in addition to studying to become a teacher, she’s sung with the ASJO big band and performed as half of the Nice Price, which celebrates bossa nova and samba music, and released another acclaimed solo set, Sing Me the News, in 2020.
If You Could See Me Now is, as I said up top, a delight—and works as well during the day as it does at night. If you enjoy old-school vocal jazz, such as Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald or Nancy Wilson, you’ll enjoy this.
The track list:
The Old Grey Cat 