FREYjA with Rebecca Rennie

Order Number freyja01

Retail Price from indie-cds.com site A$5.00: / Unit

The debut CD from Freyja is a collection of jazz originals by vocalist Rebecca Rennie, a Sydney artist with a smooth, strong and clear voice. Her band includes renowned Australian jazz artists such as Miroslav Bukovsky who deliver some fine magic. Rennie's lyrics tell very personal tales of love, loss and the frustration between and her music is perfect for a Sunday afternoon's listening. The album features some beautifully mellow jazz guitar riffs, classical, latin and funk influences. Without a Trace is musically the most original sounding tune on the album, with a running piano line in the minor verses shifting to major in the kicking choruses. This shift is also reflected in the lyrics. Bye Bye Angel opens with a classic jazz guitar line, and the song breaks into very familiar musical and lyrical terrain which Rennie holds with great conviction, right down to the spoken second verse, her strength shines more in this genre than the funk feel of Funk me in C or the Cuban edge of You may never know, though the latter features the best chorus on the album, and the band does a great job all round. Freyja won the Best Jazz Artist Category at the Oz Music awards in 2002 for Bye Bye Angel. The album closes with Take the child a ballad with a simple arrangement of voice and guitar, a somewhat less predictable tune that works well, holding interest right to the end. Rennie has a great voice that sits particularly well in the Jobim influenced style of Bye Bye Angel.Jobim is listed in her thankyous and it would be good to hear this obvious connection taken further.The band offers some tasteful solos, on trumpet, flute, piano and guitar. There is something of a thread of hopelessness running through the lyrics, which though textually interesting seemed at times overworked losing something of the presence of feeling behind them. review by Oonagh Sherrard for indie-cds.com 2005