Lorna Reid - Gypsy In My Soul

It’s difficult to fault the execution of Lorna Reid’s album of jazz standards –classy, conservative and impeccably performed, everything sounds exactly as one would expect. But therein lies the problem. While a Christmas chart full of Salvation Army brass bands, singing priests and X-Factor jazz-lite crooners demonstrates the wide market for tasteful nostalgia, it doesn’t make the overly obvious approach of Gypsy in My Soul any more enticing. Such material live will always find an appreciative audience, but it's difficult to recommend a CD full of safe renditions of songs with such illustrious pedigree, against which these versions inevitably pale (the title track alone has been recorded by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Shirley Bassey among others). For every mainstream easy listening star there are a dozen chanteuses languishing across the country, and while Lorna Reid is evidently talented enough to deserve better, she’s undone by a lack of imagination. [Chris Buckle]