★★★★★
Lea DeLaria is not your archetypal decorative female jazz singer. Of androgynous appearance she is also an actor and comedian, an out lesbian and a political activist. Musically she takes her inspiration from that great maverick Charles Mingus and likes to describe herself as "a chick singer with balls". Her brand of jazz singing is patently not about easy listening, even her CD liner notes have an air of confrontation about them...
- www.thejazzmann.com
2010-12-20
★★★★★
I know, I know - but wait until you hear it. From the opening scat version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" to the final, not-quite-bebop "White Christmas", this is the Christmas album for 2010, and not an uneasy or mawkish moment in the whole 11 numbers. Lea DeLaria is a good jazz singer who knows precisely how far you can go in swinging a straight song without tearing it apart...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-12-06
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3Lea DelariaBe a SantaWarner Classics2010 Those familiar with Lea DeLaria's refreshingly insubordinate nature and Broadway-show directness will need convincing that this album of Christmas songs isn't a joke. But the Anglophile New Yorker - who couples an operatic power that could blow out windows with a bop instrumentalist's agility - has always respected the liberating traditions of music such as jazz...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-11-22
★★★★★
Track Listing: Santa Claus is Coming to Town; What Are You Doing This New Year's Eve?; Winter Wonderland; Sleigh Ride; Christmas Time is Here; God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; A Modern Christmas Tale; The Man With The Bag; Be A Santa; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas; White Christmas...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2010-11-08
★★★★★
When Whitney Balliett called jazz "the sound of surprise," Double Standards probably wasn't what he had in mind. Not only does Lea DeLaria dismiss the ossified notions defining what jazz should be?and what material a jazz singer should cover?but also she chooses lyrics that may induce panic among the more gentile listeners who think that bebop is the latest innovation that the genre has to offer...
- www.jazzreview.com
2010-08-23
★★★★★
Given the parlous state of contemporary jazz singing (Diana Krall? Elvis, how could you?), Lea DeLaria, a butch dyke from St Louis with a dirty mouth and a deliciously wicked sense of humour, is all the more remarkable. Growing up with jazz in her veins, she was previously best known as a comic (she's also been a Broadway star), but singing is clearly her vocation...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
Lea Delaria, the anglophile American show-singer and former standup comic, has a quality rare among today's female jazz vocalists: she can blast an audience out of the exits with a raw Liza Minnelli-like power (she calls herself "a chick singer with balls"). However, she combines this with an ingenuity that conjures fresh melodies out of any tune...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2010-04-02
★★★★★
The mood is intimate and late night; a chanteuse in a little club somewhere with a piano trio augmented by sax, vibes and guitar. But New York singer and comedienne Lea Delaria is singing an unlikely mix of pop and rock songs. Can you make jazz out of Jane's Addiction or Patti Smith? The results are interesting but not completely successful. Lea takes a witty, urbane approach. She reminds me a little of Peggy Lee, although she has a broader vocal range and lacks Lee's vulnerability...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-12
★★★★★
When Whitney Balliett called jazz "the sound of surprise," Double Standards probably wasn't what he had in mind. Not only does Lea DeLaria dismiss the ossified notions defining what jazz should be?and what material a jazz singer should cover?but also she chooses lyrics that may induce panic among the more gentile listeners who think that scat singing is the latest innovation that the genre has to offer...
- www.jazzreview.com
2009-06-08
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