Katie Thiroux, Introducing

Katie Thiroux is a double threat: she plays a very together acoustic bass and sings like a nightingale. You can hear her to very good advantage on her first, Introducing Katie Thiroux (BKM 1001), which features her and a very swinging quartet. Graham Dechter gives us some sterling, very hip straight-ahead electric guitar, Roger Neumann gets rootsy and soulful on tenor sax and Matt Witek gets a leveraged swinging going on drums.

Katie's bass playing has all the woodiness, nuance and depth one looks for in a contemporary mainstream setting. Her voice is a thing of beauty, dead on, expressive and tailored to a dramatic rendering of the lyrics. She breathes life into the standards she does here. "There's A Small Hotel" gets the treatment it deserves, "Wives and Lovers" in spite of its Madmen-era chauvinism sounds convincing, and on from there. She gives us a couple of originals which show real potential for her as a songwriter, too. Her singing very much swings, like her bass playing!

There are so many competing vocal-standards albums coming out that one can get jaded with it all. But you listen to this one by Katie Thiroux and you remember why when it works you forget the mediocrity out there and swing along.

Katie Thiroux is a real jazz singer in every way. Her bass playing is great, too! Hear this, by all means.