The Girl in the Other Room

This was the record that announced Krall as a songwriter, and the title track carries that ambition. The piano playing is more angular here, the harmony more dissonant, the rhythm section used like a compositional tool rather than a stylistic backdrop. The song has a literary quality — the narrator observing another woman with a complicated mixture of recognition, envy, and something harder to name — and Krall the vocalist serves Krall the lyricist with unusual economy. Nothing is overexplained. The voice has an edge that her jazz interpretations sometimes smooth away, a directness that suits the material's narrative complexity. The production feels more modern here than elsewhere in her catalog: the piano sound harder, the bass more present, the overall atmosphere slightly more spare and contemporary. This is the record for people who love Krall's musicianship but wanted something that stretched beyond the jazz-standards frame — it rewards close listening and delivers something more ambiguous than comfort.