Glad Rag Doll Diana Krall

• 1 We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye 03:07
• 2 There Ain’t No Sweet Man That's Worth The Salt Of My Tears 04:29
• 3 Just Like A Butterfly That's Caught In The Rain 03:43
• 4 You Know - I Know Ev'rything's Made For Love 03:47
• 5 Glad Rag Doll 04:34
• 6 I'm A Little Mixed Up 04:36
• 7 Prairie Lullaby 04:22
• 8 Here Lies Love 05:08
• 9 I Used To Love You But It's All Over Now 02:50
• 10 Let It Rain 05:44
• 11 Lonely Avenue 06:57
• 12 Wide River To Cross 03:51
• 13 When The Curtain Comes Down 04:51
• Total Runtime 57:59

Info for Glad Rag Doll

Diana Krall's extraordinary new album, 'Glad Rag Doll' is an exhilarating and adventurous exploration of new sounds, new instrumentation and new musicians. It stars a singer and piano player, filled with mischief, humour and a renewed sense of tenderness and intimacy.

The record reveals itself at that remarkable vanishing point in time where all music; swinging, rocking and taboo, collide with songs of longing, solace and regret. All are made new again in a vaudeville of Krall's own imagining.

It is at once a major departure and a natural progression for the gifted musician. Diana simply calls the album, 'a song and dance record'.

'We all just went in there as if the songs were written yesterday. I didn't want to make a period piece or nostalgia record,' said Krall.

In fact, these are songs that Krall has spent a lifetime contemplating. Both her childhood home and her current address are stacked with 78rpm records and song folios filled with precious and unpolished gems, songs that have not worn out their lustre from repetition.

If any of these songs could be identified as '20's or 30's music', then they are 20's or 30's songs as imagined for the 21st Century.

The same could be said for a startling rendition of the Doc Pomus classic, 'Lonely Avenue', first cut in the 1950s.

The contemplative, contemporary reading of the old Gene Austin recording of 'Let It Rain' finds a sympathetic echo in Krall's exquisite rendition of Buddy and Julie Miller's more recent ballad of spiritual longing, 'Wide River To Cross'.

Working for the first time with renowned producer T Bone Burnett and engineer Mike Piersante, Krall revels in a fresh sonic playground captured in the vivid grain and deep resonant focus of analog tape. Burnett has assembled a distinguished cast of remarkable men to complement Krall's piano contribution at an 1890s Steinway upright.

From the hushed to the howling, Marc Ribot's poised and sympathetic solo guitar accompaniment on the title track contrasts beautifully with a range of surprising sounds and colors.

As ever with a Diana Krall record, her distinctive feel and unique sense of time is crucial. She has established a new and exciting rhythmic rapport with drummer Jay Bellerose and bassist Dennis Crouch that has let loose some of her most joyous piano playing heard on record to date.

Among the new elements brought into the spontaneous arrangement process are the mysterious, sometimes comedic commentaries coming from the keyboards of Keefus Green.

Diana Krall, Vocals, Piano
Marc Ribot, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, 6 String Bass and Banjo
T Bone Burnett, Guitars
Howard Coward, Ukulele, Mandola, Tenor Guitar, Harmony Vocals
Jay Bellerose, Drums
Dennis Crouch, Bass
Bryan Sutton, Guitars
Colin Linden, Guitars, Dobro
Keefus Green, Keyboards, Mellotron

Some music is intended to paint a romantic scene – a candlelit dinner, a walk along a moonlit beach. Quiet Nights – Diana Krall’s twelfth album – ain’t about that. Using Brazil as a musical point of reference, the award-winning pianist and singer is not suggesting a night out; she means to stay in.

“It's not coy. It's not ‘peel me a grape,’ little girl stuff. I feel this album’s very womanly – like you're lying next to your lover in bed whispering this in their ear.”

She’s not kidding. From Krall’s refreshing version of “Where or When,” to an utterly soul-stilling rendition of “You’re My Thrill,” the ten songs on Quiet Nights are disarming in their intimacy. Even those already familiar with the breathy vocals and rhythmic lilt in Krall’s music – and now there are millions – will be taken aback by just how far the music pushes, unabashedly, into the realm of sweet surrender. “It’s a sensual, downright erotic record and it's intended to be that way.”

Krall is the first to credit the musical team she assembled – her loyal quartet, ace producer Tommy LiPuma, engineer Al Schmitt plus legendary arranger Claus Ogerman – for much of the seductive power on Quiet Nights. But there’s a deeper, palpable sense of maturity that she brought to the recording as well. “Most of my singing and playing on the album is really just first or second takes. ‘You're My Thrill,’ was a second take – “Too Marvelous,” first take.”

“She’s completely matured,” says Tommy LiPuma, who should know, having first worked with Krall in 1994. “Even in the past few years. She approaches her vocal phrasing much more like an instrumentalist than a straight singer. It’s in her reading of the lyrics, and the timbre of her voice, much more misty like Peggy Lee in her mature period.” (“I didn't want to over sing -- I was drawing also from Julie London very strongly on this album,” Krall confesses, noting that such influences are not always conscious on her part. “It just came out that way.”)

As such, the Brazilian focus of Krall’s new album could not have been a more natural next step. “She's been very sympathetic to this music for a long time,” notes LiPuma. “When we did The Look of Love, we were very much leaning in the bossa nova direction. Quiet Nights is really a celebration of this music. Diana sings three Brazilian classics, she rhythmically turned four standards into that style, and three ballads. So really there are ten songs on the album of which seven are just straight up bossa novas.”

It makes sense that Quiet Nights (also the English name of the bossa nova classic “Corcovado” that is the title track) draws much of its musical spirit from the land that puts the “carnal” into its annual Carnaval celebration. “I was inspired to do this record because of my trip last year to Brazil,” says Krall, who returned to Rio de Janeiro to shoot a concert for a new DVD release. “Then I just kept going back and found that everywhere you go you still hear the sounds of Jobim and bossa nova.”

For those who may not remember or weren’t yet around, Brazil’s bossa nova wave (literally “new bump” or “new way” in Portuguese) was the widely popular musical style, based on the country’s traditional samba rhythms, that swept up from the sidewalk cafes of Rio in the early ‘60s and seduced the entire planet with its hypnotic, swaying beats, sultry melodies, and new, exciting harmonies – all with generous room for jazz improvisation. Antonio Carlos Jobim (who composed “Quiet Nights” and “The Girl from Ipanema”) and Joao Gilberto (“Este Seu Olhar”) are two of the pioneers of the music, revered as national heroes in Brazil to this day.

Fifteen years later, she can look back over a stellar career path: in ’99, signed to Verve, her career exploded when When I Look in Your Eyes won a GRAMMY® for best jazz vocal and became the first jazz disc to be nominated for Album of the Year in twenty-five years. In 2002, The Look of Love was a #1 bestseller in the US and a five-time platinum album in Canada. 2004’s The Girl in the Other Room, was her first to focus on her own songwriting (with six tunes co-written with husband Elvis Costello); 2005’s Christmas Songs proved one of the season’s best-sellers; and 2006’s From This Moment On was an upbeat, critical success that coincided with the birth of her twin sons – a life-affirming event that LiPuma feels enhanced Krall’s continuing growth as a musician. “Motherhood definitely agrees with her—and marriage. I think she's really come into her own.”

As moving as Quiet Nights is -- deriving from Krall’s feelings for Brazil and bossa novas – the singer is not shy in admitting that its sensuality is as much about her home life. “It’s my love letter to my husband – just an intimate, romantic album.” As they say in Rio – obrigado!

This album contains no booklet.