With Ledisi's debut album Soulsinger due for a re-release on Tommy Boy in April 2003, why not do a review of Ledisi's second album that came out last year since it may have escaped your notice? And besides, this album is still one of the best, innovative and expressive jazz albums in recent years. If you already own Ledisi's Soulsinger album or the Pedalpusher 12" release Breaking It Down on Naked Music you know about her incredible and distinctive voice and with Feeling Orange But Sometimes Blue she even takes it a step further with giving us a successful mixture of original compositions and some cover versions. Like other great singers like Dianne Reeves, Carmen Lundy or Nnenna Freelon Ledisi really makes the cover songs her own like Round Midnight, Straight No Chaser (with some very dangerous scatting), In A Sentimental Mood or Autumn Leaves (Les Feuilles Mortes) (that's featured in two versions here, the second being the hidden bonus track). You really have to hear what Ledisi does with blending Stanley Turrentine's Sugar and D'Angelo's Brown Sugar into one song with some ad-libs, it's that good.
There's also a bunch of original compositions Ledisi wrote with her partner in crime, Sundra "Sun" Manning and there's isn't one bad song amongst them, quite on the contrary, songs like So Right, I've Got It, If You Go or Land Of The Free are all fine with some good musicians like Nelson Braxton (of The Braxton Brothers fame) on bass, the aforementioned Sundra Manning on piano and organ or Brian Collier on drums. And then there are my two favourite Ledisi compositions, the great Meeting Marcus On A Thursday with its live-in-a-small-smoke-filled-jazz-club-feeling and the title track Feeling Orange, But Sometimes Blue that starts with an acapella intro and then turns into a fierce latin jazz affair with Pete Escovedo on timbales and shakers and Karl Perraza providing the congas and bongos. This song is one of the best I've heard in recent years and I especially like the way Ledisi finishes this song with some remarkable scatting and breathing.
So don't wait another year to get this album, when it will hopefully be re-released on a major label to give it the world-wide distribution it deserves, although on the other hand, it doesn't matter when you get this album since it has that timeless quality and certainly will sound good in ten years' time, just make sure you get your copy sooner or later.