You’d think the use of a music box on the title track from an interesting release by Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah — “Same Girl” was originally found on Randy Newman’s 1973 recording “Trouble in Paradise” — would imbue it all with this childlike wonder. (Elsewhere, Youn Sun Nah employs a kalimba, and a kazoo.) Instead, her purposeful pace, her delicate enunciation of each Newman lyric, gives the tune a deep-blue, almost black, melancholy. When she sings “you’re still the same girl,” absolutely quivering with emotion, slowing the song almost to a stop, it sounds every bit like a eulogy for something inextricably lost. A dark and wondrous song.
Half Notes is a quick-take music feature on Something Else! Reviews, presented whenever the mood strikes us.
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