With guests including Robert Glasper, Parlato turns her immaculate phrasing to soft funk, dancefloor numbers and interpretations of Stevie Wonder and Tears for Fears
Hearing Gretchen Parlato’s spellbinding version of the Herbie Hancock song Butterfly was unforgettable when the eloquent LA-born singer’s star glimmered into view in the 2000s. The unique qualities she revealed soon brought her worldwide acclaim. Butterfly would open in an onstage silence only broken by Parlato’s soft handclap on a Brazilian groove, eventually turned into a wordless vocal hook, and then the awestruck natural-world homage of the lyrics written by Hancock’s sister Jean. She would time phrases between deliberately emphatic in-breaths like cymbal hits, and arrestingly morph words in and out of abstract sound.
The Wise Ones arrives as her third album since 2021, when she returned from six years of parenting. Here, she’s backed by longtime partners including folk-rockish and jazz-influenced multi-instrumentalist Alan Hampton and Parlato’s percussionist husband Mark Guiliana, plus guests including Robert Glasper, Meshell Ndegeocello and Becca Stevens.
Parlato’s Never Come Down is a snappy groover for Giuliana’s hustling drums and Ndegeocello’s vocals and bass – full of fast, anthemic rephrasing of a catchy hook that wouldn’t be out of place on a dancefloor. The smooth-jazziness of Glasper’s soft-funky Rainbow is gently resisted by Parlato’s immaculate phrasing, canny timing and clever pacing of the backing vocals, while singer/producer Amber Navran guides her expressively close to neo-soul on the title track. Stevie Wonder’s If It’s Magic is a big highlight, as are Parlato’s languid account of Tears for Fears’ Mad World over a contrasting punchy vamp; her quietly intense chant of the typically pop-seductive Hampton ballad It’s You; and Glasper’s moving paean to creative receptivity Block the Sun. Perhaps aimed at a wider marketplace than its more improvisational and intimate predecessors Flor and Lean In, and not without a humdrum moment or two, The Wise Ones nonetheless confirms that Parlato’s inimitable character never lets her slip into the generic.