(Reprinted from the January 2024 issue of Downbeat magazine)
On her fourth album as a leader, Two Moons, singer/composer Michelle Lordi entertains a fascination with shape-shifting things: dreams, celestial bodies, natural forces, supernatural beings. It would be easy to fall into the dystopian visions that she conjures with these tunes (as on her original “Both,” the spoken word recounting of a disturbing dream)—except that Lordi’s voice itself telegraphs optimism and charm. The dissonance between this vocal presentation and the content of her tunes is mesmerizing.
Take the sentimental standard “Blue Moon,” re-harmonized here with darker changes and framed in scant accompaniment, or the folk-rock hit “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” with a marching pulse and chaotic soloing, or 1933’s romantic pop song “Close Your Eyes,” as a jarring Latin tune with off-center piano and bleating horn bits. Despite the musical disruption around her, Lordi hews faithfully to the given vocal line, a beacon in the shadow.
Lordi began crafting the album in the midst of the pandemic, so its serious mood is hardly surprising. Through the prism of her earnest vocals, though, the ear bends to understand the album’s dramatic musical settings differently: Pianist Orrin Evans’s superb comping on Lordi’s composition, “Never Break,” captures a subtle beauty that might otherwise go unremarked. In Caleb Wheeler Curtis’ pleading sax breaks on the Broadway ballad “Haunted Heart” lie the seeds of human understanding. And bassist Eric Ravis’ warm thrum on the mournful original, “Sailor and the Sea,” softens the edge of the tune’s ominous lyrics.
At the album’s eleventh hour the disquietude momentarily falls away with “Moon and Sand,” a lesser-known standard, envisioned here with a straight-ahead arrangement and a deliciously slow quarter-note feel (courtesy of drummer Nasheet Waits). In this respite, the lyrics give voice to the question behind much of the album’s angst: Will our love remain when the shifting ends?—Suzanne Lorge
Two Moons: Both, Blue Moon, Never Break, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Close Your Eyes (intro), Close Your Eyes, Haunted Heart, Scare the Ghost, Moon and Sand, Sailor and the Sea. (47:42)
Personnel: Michelle Lordi, vocals; Orrin Evans, piano; Eric Revis, bass; Matthew Parish, bass (4, 5, 6, 7); Nasheet Waits, drums; Caleb Wheeler Curtis, soprano saxophone (1, 6, 7, 8, 10)