Bootleg Friday: Madeleine Peyroux, 2004

The first time I saw Madeleine Peyroux was at Fez, in New York in 1996, when she released her debut album on Atlantic, Dreamland. I didn’t get it. Or maybe I did, but what's probably so is that I simply had no ability to listen to a jazz vocalist back then.

But Madeleine Peyroux, with her wonderful albums, Careless Love, Half The Perfect World and this year’s Bare Bones, has become one of my favorite singers of this decade, a vocalist of skill, depth and passion – a blend of the passions of blues and jazz with the complexities and ambivalence of modernity. Peyroux has that rare talent to be able to a have a song hold contradictory moods and feelings simultaneously. And the irony with which she imbues her songs is not the flip and glib style of irony which deadens art. Rather, it articulates a hard earned knowledge of the ways of the world, and it feels close to something like wisdom.

Today’s Bootleg Friday is a Madeleine Peyroux show from Berlin, Germany in December 2004, while supporting her second album, the wonderful Careless Love, one of the finest jazz vocal albums of the decade. You can hear the echoes (and songs) of her influences – Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and more. But it adds up to something that is uniquely her own.

Download: “Dance To The End Of Love” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany

Download: “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany

Download: “Between The Bars” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany

Download: “Lonesome Road” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany

Download: “Walking After Midnight” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany

Download: “(Getting Some) Fun Out Of Life” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany

Download: “La Vie En Rose” 12/9/04 Berlin, Germany