It is not easy to say something new with “Autumn Leaves”. The 1945 Torch Song is certainly one of the most performed standards in the jazz repertoire, not only by Miles Davis and Nat King Cole, but also by beginners taking lessons in the back rooms of your local music store: sit down on the piano to play his minor-key melody is a bit like the jazz version of picking up an electric guitar and going straight for “Smoke on the Water.” Putting your cover on a new album in 2024 is either a conservative move or a bold one. For Arooj Aftab, the Brooklyn-via-Lahore singer-songwriter who moves freely between jazz, folk, and Hindustani and Western classical music, it's decidedly the latter.
Aftab's “Autumn Leaves” comes early night kingdom, her fourth solo album and casts it as a fantastic spell. Metallic percussion drums in the background. Linda May Han Oh's upright bass lines follow Aftab's vocals like an elongated shadow follows the protagonist of a film noir. Without an instrument to back it up, the familiar melody becomes skeletal and haunting. Aftab's color decorations make it more eerie. Her take on “Autumn Leaves” is emblematic of the way she works: she draws from tradition while alienating it, stripping away clichés and stock to reveal the mysterious longing that gives old poems and songs their enduring power.
Two of Night KingdomHis songs take their lyrics from Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, the 18th century poet who was the first woman to publish a collection of works in Urdu. Other lyrics are Aftab originals, both in English and Urdu. Another is based on a spontaneous poem posted on Instagram by the singer's girlfriend, Pakistani actress Yasra Rizvi. Aftab brings together the mix of age-old and ephemeral source material with her magnificent voice, sometimes soaring but equally powerful in her husky low end. And with her compositions, which patiently assemble and dissolve, favoring long arcs of growth over sudden dynamic shifts. Although Night Kingdom has many distinct bands – the grungy bass guitar takes the lead on “Bolo Na”; Auto-Tune puts Aftab's voice to shame on “Raat Ki Kai”—as a whole it might feel like a singularly sweeping piece of music.
Aftab, who produces her own albums, deserves as much credit for her composition and arrangement as for her singing. Night KingdomIts palette is similar to Vulture Prince, Her breakthrough 2021 album features many of the same players along with some new ones: harpist Maeve Gilchrist, whose instrument is second only to Aftab's singing as the signature sound of her music; Aftab's Love in Exile bandmates jazz piano star Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. guitarists Kaki King and Gyan Riley; flutist Careful Clay; jamey haddad percussion; an unlikely Wurlitzer cameo by Elvis Costello; Their organs drift like a breeze of dandelion seeds, in the same general direction but with independent and unpredictable paths between one point and another. Even Moor Mother, whose stentorian spoken word is one of the most distinctive sounds in left-of-center music, becomes just another inkling when she arrives to deliver a guest verse on “Bolo Na,” her percussive edges . tradition swept into the song's rhythmic twist at halftime.
