Lisa Forkish, Bridges

Something very obvious to start: not every album that crosses my "desk" does or is designed to stop the world in its tracks. Ultimately very few can do that. There are some that you listen to and you say, "Well...that's pretty nice," and you decide to cover it. That's singer-songwriter-arranger Lisa Forkish and her album Bridges (self released).

What I like about her, the album, is she has a very decent instrument and she puts it to use in ways not typical. She does standards in different ways and they aren't the standard combinations. So you get "I Could Have Danced All Night" and the Buffalo Springfield perennial "For What It's Worth."

The arrangements are interesting. And then perhaps above all she writes songs and some of them are very good. "City of Bridges" catches my ear, for example.

Yeah this is songwriter jazz-radio crossover stuff. But it has musical value and Lisa comes across as original. So that's it and happy 4th of July to you!