Rachael & Vilray - I Love A Love Song! (2023)

Most singers and musicians who are attracted to the Great American Songbook mine its old classics extensively, but the new album by Rachael Price and Vilray Blair Bolles, I Love A Love Song!, mostly does the opposite. Instead, it salutes the period from which those great standards were born and bred without living there because Bolles wrote almost a whole album of fresh songs heavily influenced by the sound of that golden era. On this - their second album together - "Goodnight My Love" is the only cover.

Price is the lead singer for Lake Street Dive and Bolles is an excellent composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist from New York City. The two friends and collaborators met almost twenty years ago at the New England Conservatory of Music but never recorded together until their first album saw the light of day in 2019.

Lake Street Dive's music has always hinted that they could easily embrace early and mid-Twentieth Century music, and on this album - with the partnership of Bolles - Price makes her complete leap into vocal jazz.

Rachael and Vilray offer songs about love in all of its forms, including the sweet and passionate kind, but - thankfully - the album offers listeners more than just a few silly love songs. The arrangements are definitely vintage, but Bolles' lyrics often possess a provocative, modern edge. What Tin Pan Alley composition has a title like "Hate is the Basis (For Love)" in which the couple's relationship grows around their common dislikes instead of what they enjoy together?

On "Is a Good Man Real" Price asks, "I’ve never known one, What do they do? We’ve always heard the legends, but can they be true? My cousin’s best friend’s boyfriend once nearly cooked a meal. So is a good man real?"

Bolles composing is at its edgiest on "Let's Make Love On This Plane," a song that discusses just what the title says. The track originally appeared on their eponymous debut, but a different, full band version is added as a bonus track on this sophomore set. It opens with the unforgettable lines, "The law forbids it, but let’s do it all the same. Darling let’s make love on this plane." "You’ll come to know me between Washington and Spain, Darling let’s make love on this plane." The humor doesn't end there. It just could be the cleanest filthy song you've ever heard, and it works extremely well because its presented without using any four letter words, leaving more to the imagination. The official video for "Let's Make Love On This Plane" is below, but it's the earlier acoustic version from the debut album.

"Just Me This Year" references the recently completed holiday season while Price revels in treating herself well at a time of year when she doesn't have anyone else to shower her with gifts, love and affection.

The vocals of Bolles and Price are firmly rooted in the days of the old big bands. Bolles is first rate and Price is outstanding. They duet, trade lines back and forth reminiscent of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, and they sing solo too.

The stars didn't make this fine record without a big-league lineup of jazzmen supporting them. Great solos abound from a group that includes Larry Goldings playing piano, celeste, and Hammond B-3 with David Piltch on bass and Joe La Barbera on drums. Arranger Jacob Zimmerman played alto sax and clarinet while Nate Ketner brought along his tenor sax. The brass was supplied by trumpeter Jim Ziegler and trombone player Dan Barrett.

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