Honor Heffernan’s position as one of our leading jazz interpreters has tended to overshadow her abilities as a rock singer, but her work on this album serves as a lesson to those who think that singing a song is merely down to getting the notes and the words right.
Heffernan knows how to cherry-pick songs from quality songwriters while avoiding the obvious, and then stake her own claim to them. A case in point is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Here It Is’, from 2001. It’s hardly his greatest hit, but Heffernan’s treatment takes on the feel of a blues prayer. Whereas other singers take a song like J.J.Cale’s ‘After Midnight’ and wrestle it into submission, Heffernan’s instinct is to give it enough space to breathe; similarly, she doesn’t try to outdo Janis on Joplin’s ‘Move Over’, but instead adds new subtleties that weren’t there in the original. Her unforced melodiousness brings out the depth of songs like John Martyn’s ‘Some People’ and Joni Mitchell’s ‘All I Want’, while Bonnie Raitt’s hit ‘Love Sneakin’ Up On You’ works up some real sweat.
Supported by a fine band, lead by the stirring fretwork of Dick Farrelly, and featuring Neil Conti from Prefab Sprout on drums, The Other Side is an album that's as rewarding to listen to as it sounds like it was to make. It isn’t often you can say that.