Ink

Shay Estes & Trio ALL
Despite Your Destination

Shay Estes & Trio ALL’s frothy new delight of a debut record, Despite Your Destination, applies the jazz-combo treatment to a variety of standards we all know by heart. It’s the right way to revisit these popular songs: familiarly soothing on one hand, but packing enough new twists to keep the listener interested and engaged from the first cut to the last.

The Kansas City group’s debut doesn’t sound tentative in any regard. In fact, it’s easy to imagine these four musicians have been together for ages, so relaxed and in a groove their playing can be.

Estes keeps her singing smooth and restrained throughout the album, wisely adhering to Michael Feinstein’s dictate that it’s practically impossible to under-sing this type of repertoire. Her voice often recalls the easy, conversational diction and tone popular among ’40s songstresses — direct, soulful, girly and pretty, but not plain.

The three men making up Trio ALL are hardly slouches, either. Pianist Mark Lowrey and bassist Ben Leifer share a remarkably symbiotic relationship, sometimes sounding like a single, four-handed player. Drummer Zack Albetta follows Estes’ lead of letting the performance serve the song, not call attention to itself — though he’s certainly up to a little solo here or filigreed fill there.

The model for Despite Your Destination becomes clear from the outset, with a brisk “Where You At” leading into “Little Drop of Poison,” which takes on a Latin accent.

“Hello, Young Lovers” turns the “King and I” show tune ballad’s usual tempo and rhythm on its ear, skipping along briskly with a rollicking piano performance matching a subtly racing drum line.
 
“The Night We Called It a Day” is slow and torchy, while “’Round Midnight” gets a refreshing, spare and upbeat arrangement full of drumstick ticks and tocks.

Estes turns Gershwin’s “But Not for Me” into “But Not for You,” transforming a weepy lament into a gleeful kiss-off to a former lover. The lyric, “Although I can’t dismiss/The memory of his kiss/I guess he’s not for me” becomes “I hope you can’t dismiss/The memory of my kiss/Although you’re not for me.” It’s a very clever recast, giving an appropriately 2009 attitude update to a song written nearly 80 years ago.

The album contains plenty of other bull’s-eyes. “Across the Universe” is a gloriously free-form jumble, a rattling meditation on The Beatles’ oft-covered singsong catalog staple. Arthur Hamilton’s “Cry Me a River” gets the speed treatment, with Lowrey’s nifty, dissonant piano sneaking up from the low end and counterbalancing against Albetta’s sputtering snares.

The biggest impression comes from a song that’s achieved classic status only in recent years: Shay and Trio stretch out the melody of The Church’s hypnotic “Under the Milky Way” into a country-tinged ballad that stands fittingly alongside every other tune on the album.

One of Estes’ nicest touches is her resistance to showy displays of vibrato. Many (most?) performers would jump on the long, drawn-out finale to Jimmy Rowles’ “A Timeless Place (The Peacocks)” as an invitation to ostentation, but Estes lets it end simply and surely, in keeping with her pace on the rest of the track. Good decision, at least on record — though it would likely be fun to hear her tear it up live.

Shay Estes and Trio ALL have created a new take on a clutch of songs audiences might think are played about as far out as they can go. Despite Your Destination’s effortless jazz updates couldn’t possibly be a more enjoyable listen.

— derek donovan { special to ink }

Find it
You can find Despite Your Destination at Streetside Records, Prospero’s Books, The Kansas City Store, in some local Barnes & Noble stores and on iTunes.
See them
Catch Shay Estes & Trio ALL at 10:30 p.m. Jan. 9 at Jardine’s Restaurant and Jazz Club.