Reviews for
“MoonStone & Tar Sands” (2024)
Living Fearless
“With many artists trying to combine a variety of musical strands, there is always a danger that they will try to grasp too many things at one time, only scratching the surface…. Leila Adu doesn’t seem to have that problem…”
– Ljubinko Zivkovic
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Jazz Weekly
“This lady is on to something, both sonically and stylistically, forming a rich and personal language of her own.”
– George W. Harris
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Elsewhere
“Working here her trio and the PUBLIQuartet on strings, the pianist/singer skirts between genres (piano jazz, sung poetry, the melodrama of Broadway-like tunes) and – although they are quite dissimilar – the connection which comes to mind is Nina Simone for the expansive and exploratory vision.
On Negative Space she sings, “I’m no militant, I’m a peaceful kinda girl. I don’t aim to stake out my claim I just wanna do my thing about the place, but I exist in a negative space”.
In the sensitive and lightly swinging Book she addresses the conundrums in a relationship (“I don’t wanna lose what we have ’cause it’s nothing right now”)
But then on the more menacing and dramatic Snakepit: “I fell into a snakepit, filled with forked tongues and dead eyes. I get a sense of déjà vu. Everywhere minds are colonized. Imagination is good when reality kicks you in the teeth”.
For their intimacy and dense lyrics, these are songs you can imagine in a cabaret or hip nightclub setting, maybe even in a recital more than a larger concert setting.”
– Graham Reid