Chambers dictionary defines "nostalgia" as "sentimental longing for past times", which is perhaps a more accurate reflection of the Scottish singer's seventh solo album than "cynical plundering of the Great American Songbook as a reliable cash cow in the dying days of a career" - as might be applied to the recent recordings of, say, Rod Stewart.
But then Annie Lennox has always been a woman of clear, and clearly expressed, principles, while Rod surely has alimony payments and the expense of offspring-rearing as more pressing concerns.
Had an outside producer - such as Rick Rubin, Dan Auerbach or T-Bone Burnett - been involved, it is unlikely that the comparison-inviting repertoire of Billie Holiday would have been permitted to hog as much of this set, and we may also have been treated to a greater variety of instrumentation than the basic keyboard and voice mix that Lennox and co-producer Mike Stevens use for most of the disc. But that too is arguably evidence that this is a personal, and sincere, project.
Nonetheless, it is where Nostalgia goes off-piste that it works best, leaving George Gershwin and Hoagy Carmichael for the Andrews Sisters I Can Dream, Can't I? and especially with the dirty brass that decorates the closing version of Ellington's Mood Indigo.
Keith Bruce
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