A HOLIDAY ALL HER OWN

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

It's a gray, sprinkly day that seems Parisian, except it's not; it's just another dank fall day on New York City's upscale Upper West Side. Outside a cafe, lighting a cigarette in the light rain, sits a woman who when she sings sounds for all the world like Billie Holiday, but, of course, she's not. Her name is Madeleine Peyroux. She is a 22-year-old American ex-expatriate who had been living in Paris, singing in the streets for money, but recently returned to the U.S. to pursue a more mainstream singing career. Her debut album, Dreamland (Atlantic), just out, is a bewitching blend of jazz, folk and blues--as well as the most exciting, involving vocal performance by a new singer this year. Peyroux's days of needing to play in the streets for cash are probably over.

The vocals on Dreamland are immediately arresting. Like Holiday, Peyroux has a bittersweet, brokenhearted alto; she lingers and slides off notes, finding emotion in the slow, sad fade rather than the obvious vocal burst. "When I first heard [Peyroux], I thought, 'Hmmm--this is fascinating,'" says Cyrus Chestnut, an acclaimed young pianist who plays on Dreamland. "A lot of singers do Billie imitations, but this was something completely different. It didn't sound contrived. She had the nuances, the huskiness down. And she has her own story to tell: with her voice, her heart, her spirit."

Peyroux (prounounced like the country Peru) was born in Georgia, but after her parents divorced, her mother, a French teacher, moved to Paris along with her daughter. Young Madeleine soon began to explore the city. "I saw these street performers and I was fascinated," she says. Soon she was one of them, wandering the streets of Paris and Amsterdam, stealing rides on trains, sleeping in friends' apartments.

Several years later, while she was visiting New York, Yves Beauvais, a producer with Atlantic, saw Peyroux perform in a club. She spurned his first attempts to sign her--at age 17, she deemed herself too young--but then, last year, she felt she was ready. "I thought, 'I might as well try it,'" she says. "I had to make a commitment to myself."

Since recrossing the Atlantic, she has begun to make waves. Her performance at a celebration of the film music of Duke Ellington at New York City's Lincoln Center in May startled and delighted those who heard it. As she took the stage to sing Ellington's Saddest Tale--performed by Holiday in 1935--her bearing was tentative, awkward. But when she started singing, her performance was said to be impeccably phrased, suffused with emotion; the New York Times said "she might as well have been channeling Billie Holiday."

Dreamland shows that Peyroux is more than a vocal Ouija board. On the very first track she stretches beyond jazz with a patient, deeply pleasing rendition of Walkin' After Midnight, a song made famous by country star Patsy Cline. And in a nod to her French roots, Peyroux delivers a vibrant version of Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose. Dreamland features an impressive cast of supporting players. Pianist Chestnut provides restrained invention on Reckless Blues, guitarist Vernon Reid (formerly of the rock band Living Colour) enlivens Muddy Water, and up-and-coming jazz stars Marcus Printup (trumpet) and James Carter (saxophone) provide lift to several other tracks.

But amid the covers and the stellar support, Peyroux still stands out. She plays guitar sharply and ably on several tracks and contributes three pop-style original compositions that work well as blank canvases for the chiaroscuro of her voice. Young singers are often narrowly subjective; they sing as if their heartache were the first the world had ever known. The echo of Holiday in Peyroux's voice tells the listener that her lovesickness is not the first case, or the last. It makes her music all the more haunting.

--By Christopher John Farley