If there was ever a song in need a contemplative, tic-free modernization, it’s this one. Bursting with so much innate sadness, the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin'” is the very sound of longing. Unfortunately, much of the song’s brilliance is lost in an of-its-time production that trapped the group in a tinny echo chamber.
Diana Krall is here to help. Stripping away all of this song’s most dated elements, with the help of a clean and sensitive approach from producer David Foster, she gives “California Dreamin'” back to itself. Then, after reanimating all of that emotion, she adds a perfectly attenuated piano aside — maybe the only hint here that she’s more than a smokey chanteuse. Krall brings a jazz performer’s sense of proportion to everything she does.
“California Dreamin'” advances a new covers-packed interpretive album for Verve, originally due on October 21, 2014 by now pushed back into the new year as Krall deals with some health issues. Whereas she was last heard liberating a series of sensual pre-war songs on 2012’s Glad Rag Doll, here Krall continues drawing from more recent sources.
Also featured on the project are songs by Elton John (“Sorry Seems to the Hardest Word”), the Eagles (“I Can’t Tell You Why” and “Desperado“) and Crowded House (“Don’t Dream It’s Over”). The title track was inspired by a Bob Dylan demo. Krall first heard Paul McCartney’s unreleased original “If I Take You Home Tonight” while they were collaborating on his 2012 standards album Kisses on the Bottom.
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