Rebecca Pidgeon, primarily her work on the famous Chesky label, has become a bit of a celebrity in audiophile circles for her music and rare is it that one doesn't find her cover "Spanish Harlem" being played as a demonstration track. Her best known album is her first, The Raven, which has ranked nearly as high as Diana Krall's various works.
The music is a combination of famous covers, such as the aforementioned "Spanish Harlem", and some of her own work, such as the song the album borrows it's title from, "The Raven." The selection is fairly good and Rebecca has a remarkable, breathy voice that she is not ashamed to show off it's abilities in this album. The instrumentals are a bit sparse, with a minimum number of instruments that serve as a backdrop for the very forward, prominent vocals.
The problem I find with the music is that it's all too technically perfect. Rebecca appears to be suffering from what I call "Sarah Brightman Syndrome (SBS)" wherein she's attempting to be too accurate, too clean in her singing while trying to show how light her voice can hit the notes. Never does one note overlap the next and the timing is kept exquisitely accurate. Same with her tone, it falls exactly where the music calls for it to be and hardly wavers from the set level. Rebecca fails to let the emotion of the song dictate the music, dirty up the sound, and so lacks the organicity that makes music music. The instrument players are no better as they're obviously trying hard to play as cleanly as possible, but allow little individuality to show and demonstrate limited interaction with one another. If feels as though the listener is sitting backstage listening to the musicians practice rather than an actual performance At best, the music, while technically near perfect, sounds plainly like the people are playing for the recording machines rather than to instill an emotional experience in a human audience. This album exudes the sense that it was designed to be for demonstration purposes, not for entertainment. This may not be a fault on Pidgeon, for she may only have been singing what was asked of her by the label to ensure her music making it to market.
Regarding the sound quality, it is quite good. Chesky likes to talk up their techniques and the resultant natural imaging and depth their recordings possess. They definitely have something there as the soundstage was surprisingly deep with a guitarist playing just a couple of feet away from my knee and a "stick clicker" sitting in the far back right a good 16 feet back (~8 feet farther behind Pidgeon). The imaging is fairly natural, good separation with very strongly positioned instruments that are realistically sized rather than narrow points some imaged enhanced recordings can create. The vocals are a bit smeared more than typical at the center, but this appears to be an artifact of the microphones (more on this later) than and perhaps evidence of the recording quality. The sound is quite distortion free, avoiding analog mastering artifacts many other labels intentionally introduce, and very transparent with little "pleasant" fuzzing up of the music.
Unfortunately, the sound overall is quite thin with an upwards tilt and a touch of associated harshness, particularly on the vocals. For the most part, bass and body (midbass-lower midrange) are unnaturally diminished, upwards of 6-10dB below a realistic balance. As Chesky pursues a similar approach as Mapleshade, ie no mastering, I assume this is due to a combination of the microphones and recording venue, the latter being the most prominent. It's very apparent that this album was recording in a large, near empty venue with a great many hard surfaces. The reverberation is distracting in its excessive levels (collapsing the they are here illusion) and early reflections are fairly evident possibly explaining the strong upwards tilt of the sound and the tinge of harshness (unnatural) with the vocals. If the "studio" is large, that could also explain how much of the bass through lower midrange are MIA, though I still suspect the microphone to be introducing its own artifacts for I've several other recordings (audiophile and non-audiophile alike) that sound far more natural and tonally realistic. However, there is always the possibility that this was intentional as enthusiasts in our hobby have a tendency to equate bright with "more detailed", something that has been used to the advantage of sales time and time again.
Overall, Rebecca Pidgeon's album has great demonstration value and the music is listenable, though I'd consider it more for background music uses rather than something to really draw the listener in.
- JP