The title, Suit Yourself, is the sort of phrase that cuts two ways: a shrug of indifference, or an act of absolute sovereignty. Owen means the latter. Produced by the artist herself \u2014 with co-production from the prodigiously gifted drummer Jamison Ross on the closing track \u2014 this is an album made entirely on Owen’s terms. No label executive, no committee of taste. Just a singer who knows exactly what she is and refuses to be anything else.<\/p>
“Owen does not so much interpret a song as inhabit it \u2014 rearranging the furniture, drawing the curtains, and making herself entirely at home.”<\/em><\/p> Opening salvo “That’s Why I Love My Baby” announces its intentions immediately: slow-burn, smoke-wreathed, the kind of sophisticated jazz-blues that doesn’t try to seduce you so much as simply assume your surrender. It works. Owen’s voice \u2014 that rich, mellifluous instrument, simultaneously plush and precise \u2014 coils around the melody with the ease of someone who has spent so long in this repertoire that the boundary between singer and song has long since dissolved. She does not so much interpret a song as inhabit it \u2014 rearranging the furniture, drawing the curtains, and making herself entirely at home.<\/p> Her backing ensemble, the Gentlemen Callers, deserve their own paragraph of praise. David Torkanowsky at the piano brings a New Orleans wit and weight that grounds everything without ever crowding Owen’s space. Kevin Louis on cornet adds a bruised, burnished gold to the proceedings, while Ricardo Pascal’s saxophone moves between foreground and shadow with the instincts of a master conversationalist. Ken Warshawsky’s double bass is the spine of the whole enterprise \u2014 felt as much as heard. And Jamison Ross, Grammy-winning producer and drummer, plays with the kind of precision that makes swing feel inevitable.<\/p> The choice of repertoire is impeccable and reveals an Owen who has done her listening. Aretha Franklin’s “Evil Gal Blues,” taken with the full JO Big Band, is a thunderclap \u2014 the horns swell like a tide coming in, and Owen surfs it without breaking a sweat. Nellie Lutcher’s “For You My Love” is treated with the reverence it deserves: a reminder that Lutcher, one of the great undersung figures of postwar American music, wrote melodies built to last. And on Etta James’s “Since I Fell For You,” Owen brings a vulnerability that stops the listener cold \u2014 no histrionics, no overselling, just the nakedness of the lyric and a voice willing to meet it there.<\/span><\/p> The guest contributions are, without exception, inspired. The duet with New Orleans luminary Davell Crawford on “Today I Sing The Blues” crackles with the electricity of two musicians who genuinely enjoy listening to each other; their voices circle and lock like dancers who’ve never met but immediately know the same steps. Joe Bonamassa contributes blistering guitar to “Mind Is On Vacation” \u2014 his playing is incendiary without being theatrical, a shot of something raw and real amid the polished linen of the record’s production. And the album’s closing statement, “Inside Out,” with the Tonya Boyd-Cannon Choir, is simply one of the finest things Owen has ever committed to tape: gospel-inflected and genuinely moving, it arrives like grace after a long night.<\/span><\/p> The big band arrangements, meanwhile \u2014 whether on the stomping “Moanin'” or the swaggering “Evil Gal Blues” \u2014 never lose sight of the singer at their centre. These are not vanity projects dressed up in brass; they are living, breathing arrangements that serve the song and the voice and nothing else. That Owen produced them herself is a testament not just to her musicianship but to her architectural intelligence. She understands what a record is: not a collection of tracks, but a room you walk into and don’t want to leave.<\/span><\/p> If “Blue Skies” proves she can deliver a standard with fresh eyes, and “Shall We Dance?” reveals her gift for wry, light-footed swing, then the more intimate moments \u2014 particularly “Have A Good Life,” with its quiet devastation \u2014 remind us that Owen is equally at home with the small truth as the grand gesture. The range on display is staggering, and yet the album never feels like a showcase. It feels like a life.<\/span><\/p> VERDICT<\/span><\/p> Suit Yourself is the work of an artist operating at the absolute summit of her powers. Judith Owen has built a record that lives simultaneously in the grand tradition of jazz and blues and entirely outside of it \u2014 because it belongs, first and last, to her. Joyful, heartbreaking, swaggering, and tender, it is the kind of album that reminds you why music was invented. Essential.<\/span><\/p><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/judithowen.net\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n
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