MATHILDE SANTING - Forty Nine

The charm, the seduction, the perfection that accompanies every release by the Dutch singer have never received the recognition they deserve. Thirteen albums in twenty-six years of career that have revisited the finest pages of international songwriting, excellent albums of original songs such as "Water Under The Bridge", an important tribute album to Randy Newman ("Texas Girl & Pretty Boy"), and other masterpieces, such as "Out Of These Dream", "Breast And Brow", "To Others To One".

No false steps for the Dutch singer, made a Knight by Queen Beatrix: her covers are intense and personal, the arrangements give the songs new life and depth, and her voice captures their essence, making them personal and lived-in.

Great American songwriters such as Todd Rundgren, Randy Newman, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, songs drawn from the repertoire of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and finally a series of reinterpretations of new wave composers and bands, such as Green Gartside, Roddy Frame, Black, Comsat Angel, New Order, are all part of the repertoire of one of the finest female voices in modern music.

Her voice is an autonomous physical body: it breathes, whispers, screams, consoles, seduces, enchants, and more, as the latest chapter, "Forty Nine", demonstrates.

Mathilde Santing, after a few original projects, has pursued the difficult career of interpreter with ever-growing conviction. And now a solid core of rock and jazz musicians lend versatility and class to this new work, recorded in Utrecht.

Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" astonishes for its emotional intensity, as the voice uproots the song's melodic essence and lays it out over sparse classical piano notes. Full of soul and verve is the beautiful "All In Love Is Fair" by Stevie Wonder, where Mathilde's voice duets with Jan Van Dukeren's trumpet, reaching perfection.

Mathilde takes on different worlds: jazz is celebrated through Miles Davis's "All Blues", whose admirable, reverent arrangement offers the voice a fine bed on which to show the maturity reached after her American experience; on the opposite side, there's the magical reinterpretation of "Ghosts", which holds up well against the original by David Sylvian and his Japan: film-noir orchestrations, minimal breaks and a voice steeped in pure romanticism, for one of the best cover versions ever heard.

While the previous "Under Your Charms" raided Josh Rouse and Tim Hutton, on the new "Forty Nine" it's John Mayer who is the most revisited songwriter: the pop-jazz of "Stitched Up" is elegant, the melancholy of "Only Heart" seductive.

Less conventional is the reworking of Rufus Wainwright's "Going To A Town", stripped of the original's exuberance: Mathilde's interpretation is more poetic and delicate.

Elaborate arrangements mark "Sweet Tears", which seems to have stepped straight out of the pages of Donald Fagen's "Nightfly", while the reworking of Amos Lee's "Supply And Demand" is robust and incisive; together with the two less interesting episodes – "Wheel" and "Shadow On The Wall" – it rounds out the Dutch singer's new album with class.

"Forty Nine" is a record that defies contemporary temptations, achieving the difficult art of auteur pop. Mathilde Santing is not just another fine interpreter to add to the catalogue of the brave ma..., but a rare example of an Artist with a capital A who is only waiting to be given her due. Let yourself be seduced.

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15/07/2009