2001 · Album
The Look of Love
Verve Records · Produced by Not specified in provided sources · Released: September 18, 2001
Elegant Restraint, Swinging Easy
Krall's voice sits perfectly in the pocket, never rushing, never overselling—just living inside the song.
The Look of Love is where Diana Krall sounds most comfortable in her own skin. By this point in her career, she had found a pocket that worked: small ensembles, mostly standards, piano-anchored arrangements that let the melody breathe. What makes this record stick is how much space there is in it. The production doesn't clutter. The rhythm section doesn't push. Krall's voice—warm, conversational, pitched somewhere between alto and mezzo—floats over arrangements that know when to step back.
The album topped the Canadian charts and won the Juno Award for Album of the Year, which tells you something about how the record landed at home. It also earned Al Schmitt the Grammy for Best Engineered Album in the non-classical category, and that's audible: the recording is clean without being sterile, detailed without being fussy. You can hear the room. You can hear where the musicians are sitting. Compared to some of Krall's earlier work, this one leans into intimacy over flash. There are no pyrotechnics here, no attempts to prove anything. It's the sound of someone who knows what she does well and doesn't feel the need to oversell it.
If you're new to Krall, this is probably the right place to start. It's more refined than her debut work and more straightforward than some of what came after. It's not a masterpiece—the critics were measured about it, and they were right to be—but it's a solid, listenable record that understands that standards exist because they work, and that the job of the singer is to find what makes this particular version matter.
Who's playing
Diana Krallpiano
Dori Caymmiguitar
Russell Maloneguitar
John Pisanoguitar
Jeff Hamiltondrums
Peter Erskinedrums
Paulinho da Costapercussion
Where next?
More by Diana Krall
All 22 albums →
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
