Build a Bridge

Album Review

Audra McDonald's third solo album was called Happy Songs, which wasn't entirely an accurate description of the contents. Her fourth CD, Build a Bridge, might have been called Unhappy Songs, since it consists largely of compositions with lovelorn lyrics. But a better way to think of it is as her take on music of the rock era. A Juilliard-educated star of Broadway musicals and plays, McDonald has built her solo recording career carefully, beginning with an album largely devoted to upcoming theater music composers (Way Back to Paradise, 1998), followed by one that looked back to earlier ones like Harold Arlen (How Glory Goes, 2000), and then Happy Songs (2002), on which she covered interwar pop standards associated with predecessors such as Ethel Waters. Even on the second and third discs, she managed to find room for more songs by her favorites among the new Broadway writers, particularly Adam Guettel and Michael John LaChiusa, and she does again on Build a Bridge; in fact, the title song is by Guettel. But the other songwriting names include such familiar pop/rock figures as Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, John Mayer, Nellie McKay, Laura Nyro, Randy Newman, Rufus Wainwright, and Neil Young. Such writers present a special challenge to an interpretive artist because they are all performers themselves and because, as pop artists, their own versions of their songs are often well known. Song choice becomes a paramount concern in such a situation; one wants to find songs that are good, appropriate to one's voice, and yet not too familiar. McDonald is successful in her choices until she nears the end of the disc. "God Give Me Strength," the opener, may be the best known of Bacharach and Costello's collaborations, but still isn't ubiquitous, and McDonald has little trouble giving it a strong reading that contrasts well with Costello's. The same can be said of Mayer's "My Stupid Mouth," which may be his best-written song even if it isn't his best known, and which works well translated into a woman's sensibility. "My Heart" turned up on Young's 1994 album Sleeps with Angels, but many listeners will be encountering it for the first time here, and it's a real find. So is Wainwright's tango tribute/lament to female opera characters, "Damned Ladies." These songs fit in beautifully with Guettel's "Build a Bridge" and "Dividing Day," as well as Ricky Ian Gordon's "Cradle and All," which are typically art-song-oriented works for these theater composers. And Nyro's "To a Child" from her 1984 album Mother's Spiritual is just obscure enough to offer an opportunity for a fresh interpretation from McDonald. That's the tenth track, and the album would have been better off stopping right there. Track 11, "Bein' Green," has, of course, been done to death already, an awful fate for a song that always depended on its very slightness and whimsical absurdity for its appeal. There is no hint of Kermit the Frog here; McDonald gives the song a humorless reading that leans heavily on its racial metaphor to disastrous effect. Even worse is Track 12, Nyro's "Tom Cat Goodbye" from her 1969 album New York Tendaberry. This is one of those Nyro songs nobody has tried to cover for good reason. It's a mad, impressionistic medley that Nyro put across through sheer passion, but probably far too personal and obscure for anyone else to perform effectively. McDonald never gets a handle on it. She regroups at the end of the album with a version of Newman's "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today" that sensibly uses his arrangement, although she never convinces the listener that she has anything new to bring to the song. All of which just goes to show that, as has been true since the mid-'60s, when many songwriters began singing their own songs instead of turning them over to professional singers, it's hard for those professional singers to find material they can make their own. McDonald actually has been more successful than most, by largely eschewing the work of pop singer/songwriters until now. Even here, she has made some good choices of material and interpretation before blundering at the end.