Music Review: Ann Kittredge Finds New Ways To FEEL THE EARTH MOVE With Her New Single

There’s good news and there’s bad news.  The good news:  Ann Kittredge has recorded a new album.  The bad news:  ROMANTIC NOTIONS won’t be released until the spring.  Never fear, Kittredge Kids, Ann has released a single, a teaser, a trailer, an amuse bouche to whet the appetite.  And here’s the really good news: the single is great.

Does everyone remember the heyday of the Carole King pop hit “I Feel The Earth Move”?  Whether your mother played the Tapestry album while you were growing, whether you were old enough to buy the disc with your own money, or whether you found it years later, say, for example, while at the theater seeing the musical BEAUTIFUL, “I Feel The Earth Move” is a part of the history of American music, a piece of pop culture iconography that can show up anywhere, anytime, like as background music in the movie Terms of Endearment.  But Ann Kittredge’s new version of the Seventies radio classic is not going to be background music anywhere.

For her own version of the opening track from TAPESTRY, Ann Kittredge has gone a new direction, which is apparent from the slow and sultry beginnings of the single.   Smooth and sexy and capturing a mood that melds jazz with rhythm and blues, the performance is immediately more sensual than in any previous iteration (unless someone else has gone this route and I’ve missed it).  In the past, when the woman in the story sings these famous lyrics “I feel the earth move under my feet / I feel the sky tumblin’ down / I feel my heart start to tremlin’/ Whenever you’re around” it feels like she is dancing, living her best life, leaping from joy and excitement at the sight of her lover.  It’s a story of sunshine, celebration, and a world of infinite possibilities.  The woman in Ann Kittredge’s story appears to be feeling the earth move for a more … ahem… personal reason, a more… ahem… intimate reason, and it isn’t just the sight of her lover that has had this powerful effect over her.  Why, it’s almost enough to make a girl blush, writing these things.  Or not.  And if the listener blushes while listening to the music, chances are they have felt the earth move, too, and, thus, know, exactly, the story that Ann Kittredge is telling.  And Ann is telling the story in more ways than just this new arrangement.  The quality of the vocal performance is perfect, with Kittredge taking her time, controlling her breathing, and adjusting her volume for the rise and fall of the story, as it is happening.  She is a master technician who also happens to have flawless skills as an actress, using her technique and her acting to give rise to her sweet, silky soprano, lovely and lilting, haunting and hedonistic.  It’s not just a good story she is telling: it’s a pretty one.

It is always fun to see where different artists will go with material that has already been tested and is a known entity.  After all, where’s the fun in singing songs the same way as everyone else?  Each time a new edition of Peter Pan is published, it has illustrations by a new artist.  So how will every illustrator of song paint the tried-and-true?  Ann Kittredge, clearly a woman with a great deal of experience on the stage (all of them) and in life, is an artist looking for new ways to storytell, a woman with a point of view all her own, and all of that goes into her work as a performer, hence the continual high quality of her work.  And, out of respect for the work, the quality, and the listener, she places her performance in good hands with Christopher Denny and Barry Kleinbort, who created the arrangement for her, and a band made up of some of the best in the business, including musical director Denny, at the piano.  Denny’s cast mates in the band are Sean Harkness (guitar), Rex Benincasa (percussion) and Jay Leonhart (bass), and the entire project comes together under the well-studied eye of producer Paul Rolnick.  It’s a good group to have supporting you, and they appear to understand (and really care about) Ann and her aesthetic because I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE is an exciting entry for everyone’s playlist - one that has me ready to enjoy more of ROMANTIC NOTIONS.  In the spring.

I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE is a new release on Jazzheads, Inc. label, available on all streaming platforms.

Follow Ann Kittredge at her website HERE.

Ann Kittredge in on LinkTree HERE.