Music Review: Isabelle Georges Is In Love, Apparently, & With Paris, Apparently, As She Releases 2 Singles - SO IN LOVE & I LOVE PARIS

Heigh Ho, dear lovely rainbow tribe, welcome back to Bobby’s CD sandbox where we offer our broken-down breakdowns of new music releases. So, strap in and get ready, as Bobby goes on the record ABOUT the record.

This week’s music entry in the BobbyFiles comes from French chanteuse par excellence, Isabell Georges, who recently released two, count them two, English language singles about everyone’s favorite French emotion, Love. Ahhh L’amour, L’amour, mon petit chou, what can one say or sing about L-O-V-E? Well, if one were to sing about it, Cole Porter is the one to turn to, and with her recordings of two of his great American Songbook standards, SO IN LOVE and I LOVE PARIS, La Isabelle shows heart and style in abundance. 

For her performance of SO IN LOVE, the soft smooth jazz opening in the trumpet supports tender, almost tentative, guitar that melds with Isabelle’s restrained emotional voice  in an oh-so-soft and breathy production in which the sheer weight of love is apparent. She is singing, sitting at the bar, in a haze of cigarette smoke. Despite the breathy production, though, George's voice has a range that gives the song heft in both upper and lower registers.
 

Matching the trumpet with her voice in those closing strains is a bit of magical polish on the whole performance. That woman sitting in the smoke-filled bar is lamenting the love she can’t deny, feeling every ounce of their passion and fighting with herself over it until she has to concede (the cover art even assists with the dramatic tension).  There is a reason that the history of cabaret and musical storytelling looks so strongly to the French:  they know what they are doing.  Isabelle Georges is a singing actress who carries the tradition on, today, with all the skill and individuality the world has come to rely on from the artists of the French persuasion involved in the act of creation.

For I  LOVE PARIS, Mlle Isabelle is deceptive with her slow, almost languid opening that leads into a bold jazz bounce. This sounds like something right out of the 30s - 40’s big band era, in fact, the arrangement has a beautiful bona fide bebop to it. Here she belts and wails, using her trained voice to run up and down the full scale of the song. There is great delight in her cheeky rendition - animation, exhilaration, and une vraie joie de vivre.  (And we need to talk about her outfit in the photo for the single - Bobby approves of all Eiffel Tower couture, that's all.)

The instruments share the need to dance with her voice, creating loads of musical tension. Her spoken improvisation in which she names famous French landmarks (in the bridge) is both inspired and amusing. This is a singer with the band giving it over to the boogie-woogie. She might love Paris, but what she REALLY loves is the beebopadoodlydowap… and who wouldn’t, my angels… who wouldn’t?

Porter’s music matched with his incomparable lyrics was unmatched in his day, in Bobby’s HO, but he finds a perfect match with Isabelle Georges. Both of these songs come from Porter’s later era, post his tragic horse riding accident in 1937, when the songs, especially the love songs he composed, were heavier, relying more on diminished chords and minor keys. Everything was a bit mournful and was given an "it's late at night and we're a little intoxicated" tone, with a sadness and pain to it all. With SO IN LOVE, the vocal and instrumental arrangements marry it all together in a soft, loving embrace, compelling the listener to… listen. Isabelle’s I LOVE PARIS, though, is a party version, meant to get everyone on their feet. She keeps her voice low through a lot of it but, then, opens up her upper register at just the right moments, to give it “some welly,” as the English say.  She is loads of fun, here, taking the song away from the languid traditional takes. As far as the words and music go for both of the tunes, it is Cole Porter - what is there to say except these recordings delighted this reviewer’s ears, and so we give them both a robust 

4 Out Of 5 Rainbows - Put this one in your collection/stream today.

Read former cabaret editor Stephen Mosher's Review Of Isabelle's Album OH LA LA: HERE

On AMAZON
Purchase SO IN LOVE On Amazon: HERE

And I LOVE PARIS: HERE

On SPOTIFY
You Can Find I LOVE PARIS On The Spotifies: HERE

And SO IN LOVE: HERE
 

Isabelle Georges will be at 54 Below on February 22nd.  Information and reservations are waiting for you HERE.  Read a Broadwayworld review of Isabelle George's last 54 Below appearance HERE.

You Can See And Hear Everything About Isabelle Georges On Her Webbysite: HERE

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