2004 · Album
The Girl in the Other Room
Verve Records · Produced by Diana Krall, Elvis Costello · Released: March 31, 2004
Diana Krall Steps Out of Her Comfort Zone
Krall trades the Great American Songbook for something more personal, and it mostly works.
By 2004, Diana Krall had built a very comfortable career playing standards with a small jazz combo — piano, bass, drums, the occasional guitar. She was good at it. Really good. But The Girl in the Other Room (2004) is the album where she decided that wasn't enough. It's her seventh studio record and her first to include original songs, co-written with her husband Elvis Costello. That collaboration turns out to be the most interesting thing about this record. Costello brings a literary, slightly off-kilter sensibility to the lyrics, and Krall matches it with arrangements that are moodier and less polished than her earlier work.
The originals like "Almost Blue" — well, borrowed from Costello's catalog — and the title track sit alongside covers of Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell, which tells you something about the company Krall is keeping here. This is not a cocktail-hour record. The Waits cover "Temptation" in particular has a low, bruised quality that suits her voice well. The piano playing is still elegant, but there's more grit in the production, less of the soft-focus sheen of her Verve albums up to this point.
Is it a perfect record? No. Some tracks feel like they're reaching for a darker atmosphere without quite committing to it. But as a pivot, it's a genuinely interesting one. Fans who only knew Krall as a standards interpreter got a surprise here, and it holds up as the moment she started writing her own story rather than just interpreting everyone else's. If you've only heard her earlier work, this one is worth the detour.
Who's playing
Christian McBridedouble bass
John Claytondouble bass
Diana Krallpiano
Anthony Wilsonguitar
Neil LarsenHammond organ
Peter Erskinedrums
Jeff Hamiltondrums
Terri Lyne Carringtondrums
Where next?
More by Diana Krall
All 22 albums →
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
