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New York Times’ Nate Chinen’s Review of Sachal Vasandani’s We Move

SACHAL VASANDANI “We Move” (Mack Avenue)

Jazz singing is a flexible discipline: it’s not determined by repertory or the particulars of style. What makes a jazz singer has more to do with a set of tools and instincts, and by that measure Sachal Vasandani qualifies as one of the stronger new arrivals in the field. A New Yorker by way of Chicago, he released his debut, “Eyes Wide Open” (Mack Avenue), in 2007. At that time his pop tendencies registered as vaguely calculated, and it was hard to draw a bead on his taste. “We Move,” his second album, is more cohesive despite a similarly broad range of material: Mr. Vasandani, 30, has come a lot closer to articulating an identity, with jazz and pop commingling in unassuming ways. He wrote a handful of the songs, including “Every Ocean, Every Star,” a pragmatic meditation, and the title track, a pensive reverie partly credited to Erik Privert. The sound of these originals can call to mind the atmosphere of indie-folk acts like Bon Iver: haunted, a little fragile, rooted in focused solitude.The flexibility of Mr. Vasandani’s phrasing would mark him as a jazz singer whether or not he ventured any scat choruses. But it’s worth noting that he includes two songs with vocalese lyrics by Jon Hendricks, and that he nods elsewhere to Betty Carter and Mark Murphy, patron saints of jazz-vocal libertarianism. His version of “Don’t Worry About Me” comes from the playbook of Kurt Elling, whose influence here feels both profound and matter-of-fact. The best news about “We Move” is that Mr. Vasandani seems comfortable with precedent as well as freedom. But it’s also clear that he’s a jazz singer with good ideas, including some about what a jazz singer can be.

NATE CHINEN - review