The 32-year-old singer has been compared favorably to Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday because of surface similarities in her voice. But rather than grit and angst, there's a dreamy, wistful quality to Peyroux's new album, which at times is even sunny (sort of the glass-half-full interpretation).  Full text...

Half the Perfect World (it's a Leonard Cohen song) stays close to last year's Peyroux hit Careless Love - smokily underplayed backings mixing sly organ licks and soft rhythm guitar for the singer's affecting, drifting-blossom voice.  Full text...

For somebody with such an apparently tortured public image, Madeleine Peyroux certainly sounds relaxed. Whereas her every TV appearance is conducted with the air of one who'd rather be cutting her toenails with a rusty scythe, and intervals between albums are punctuated with mysterious disappearances, every note of Half The Perfect World oozes an effortless, languid charm.  Full text...

Madeleine Peyroux is back with her third release, Half the Perfect World, another series of songs that provide different glimpses onto the many-faceted jewel that is love. Arguably the best vocalist working today, her captivating siren call wavers on the border between joy and heartbreak, simultaneously presenting the pleasure and pain love brings through her evocative voice.   Full text...

Don’t let Peyroux’s caressing tones lull you into thinking that she is mere dinner-jazz ear candy. The Georgia-born, Paris- raised singer inhabits a song completely and convincingly, be it Fred Neil’s Everybody’s Talking or Tom Waits’s Heart of Saturday Night.  Full text...

This chanteuse's fourth album is steeped in jazz and classic pop; much of it is polite and pretty.  Full text...