Lucia Cadotsch - Speak Low

The Guardian 100

(Yellowbird/ENJA)

Remember the name Lucia Cadotsch – you’re going to be hearing a lot of it. Cadotsch is a young, Zurich-born vocalist who possesses a classical clarity, a folk singer’s simplicity, and an appetite for performing very famous songs (Moon River, Don’t Explain, Strange Fruit) in the company of two edgy free-jazz instrumentalists, who flank her sedate progress with split-note sax sounds and spiky basslines and percussive strumming. That might sound like a merciless deconstruction of fine songs, but in this compelling trio’s hands the process is remarkably melodious and illuminating. Speak Low is delivered with phlegmatic gentleness as saxophonist Otis Sandsjö’s looping ostinato gets increasingly windy and raw, and Strange Fruit is stalked by multiphonic sax growls and swiped, twanging bass chords. Cadotsch is as light-stepping and dolefully swinging as Madeleine Peyroux on Some Other Spring; low-key on Moon River, as if the very thought of the rainbow’s end is wearisome. It’s all eerily beautiful.