Madeleine Peyroux's excellent new album 'Half The Perfect World' has the tremendous challenge of following up one of this decade's very finest musical offerings – her earlier 'Careless Love' LP, which was a modern masterpiece of jazz and folk fusings. Since its release two years ago, I must've recommended that album to over fifty people, and no one who heard it said anything but positive words about it. It featured jaw-droppingly stunning cover versions of songs that were almost total reworkings from their initial musical arrangements, but delivered in Madeleine's sultry, playful and intensely romantic stylings, it was nearly impossible not to be floored by her the purity of her emotion and stupefying musical talent. "Dance Me To The End Of Love" and "Don't Wait Too Long" became household hits, her cover of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" was revelatory. And her versions of "J'ai Deux Amours," "I'll Look Around" and "This Is Heaven To Me" are perhaps the most exquisite romantic ballads yet performed by anyone in this young century. (The extraordinary power of Madeleine's musical spell was such that she could take a song about romantic breakup, like "No More," and turn it into a ballad of seduction – with her seducing us, her audience.)

I imagine many people will be just as enchanted, if not more so, by 'Half The Perfect World.' But at first listen, while I can certainly call it exemplary, and Madeleine still sings and plays like no other jazz musician today, I unfortunately can't call it a masterpiece. Admittedly, I mostly attribute this to my already intense familiarity with so many of the songs in the album's tracklisting. Madeleine and her band cover Sinatra's "Summer Wind," Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking" (made infamous from the 'Midnight Cowboy' soundtrack), Joni Mitchell's dour ballad "River," and Tom Waits' barroom folksong "(Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night," as well as Charlie Chaplin's rather sentimental "Smile." It's not that the songs are bad, per se, only that Madeleine's earlier choices for cover songs seemed a little more inspired. Peyroux's decision to slow down "Everybody's Talking" into a torch song is daring and enchanting, and definitely one of the most rewarding cover versions. As for the other covers, it's not an offensive selection, and Madeleine's covering is pleasant enough (how couldn't it be), but did we really *need* another cover of "Summer Wind"? I'm not sure this song, like several of the other covers, is truly special enough to warrant inclusion on Madeleine's first album in two years.

While I love Joni Mitchell, and truly enjoy a lot of k.d. lang's discography, Madeleine's duet with lang on Mitchell's "River" seems to me to be the weakest moment on 'Half The Perfect World'; I've never particularly been a fan of this song anyways, and it doesn't add much to the album. Perhaps you could argue that Madeleine's cover of "Between The Bars" from 'Careless Love' was also a bit of a bummer amongst the otherwise uplifting material; but Madeleine's hushed and respectful delivery of that song recreated a truly astonishing tale of alcoholism and mournful desperation that was remarkable in its emotional impact. On the other hand, I just find "River" a little too maudlin and simplistic in its musical depiction of romantic mistreatment and guilt, and Peyroux's and lang's take on it unfortunately cannot lift the song out of its fundamental moroseness.

Madeleine is still one of our greatest musical romantics, and throughout the new album there are indeed terrific flashes of the musical passion and intense romanticism that saturated the 'Careless Love' LP. Her gorgeous take on Serge Gainsbourg's "La Javanaise" includes a lovely orchestral string arrangement and Madeleine's marvelous and much-beloved French phrasings. "Once In A While" is a very pretty folk song about survival and strength. Her covers of Leonard Cohen's "Blue Alert" and "Half The Perfect World" are Madeleine at her finest - the title track in particular being the strongest song on the entire album, a delicate masterpiece of a love song in and of itself, and every bit as musically luminous and passionate as anything off 'Careless Love.' The remainder of the material is very enjoyable if not necessarily revelatory: "I'm Alright," "All I Need Is A Little Bit" and "California Rain" are all sunny, poppy numbers with a grounded optimism at their center. And her closing the album with "Smile" brings a welcome final note of positivity and encouragement, if not one as hypnotic or blissful as "This Is Heaven To Me" from the previous LP.

Still, while I would give 'Careless Love' 10 out of 10 and 'Half The Perfect World' 8 out of 10, that hardly means that I'm let down with her new album. Following up a masterpiece is never an easy task for any artist, and Madeleine has given us another fantastic album that may not reach her earlier album's consistent depths of feeling or musical imagination, but is still enormously enjoyable on its own rights (the obvious joke to make would be that it's half a perfect album, but it's better than that). Once again Larry Klein delivers a beautiful job of production, and it's wonderfully performed by Madeleine as well as all of her session musicians. Shortcomings aside, it's still one of my very favorite albums of the year thus far, right behind Juana Molina's ambient-folk masterpiece 'Son' and Cat Power's astonishing southern-soul-reinventing 'The Greatest' (which for me has the same romantic intensity and longing of Madeleine's classic 'Careless Love' LP).

Daniel Mohr, Sun Prairie, WI, USA