THE YEARNING

Evening Standards

★★★★★

ELEFANT CD / LP

Joe and Maddie return with another collection of heartmelting coochie-coos that aren’t ashamed to wear their unabashed ’60s fascination on their sleeves. And with the likes of Claudine Longet, Françoise Hardy and Dusty Springfi eld hovering over each delicious musical gumdrop, they just may be creating the most wholesome, luxuriously seductive music around.

The pair expand their oeuvre into lovely classical waters with the mournful baroque pop of single ‘When I Lost You’, reflect Spanish pavilions glistening in the sun with the whispered, wistful cha-cha of ‘Don’t Know What I’m Doing’ (they must be huge Jeanette fans), and evoke nostalgic evenings listening to Gilberto Gil and Stan Getz by the fi reside with the dreamy, rainy day sadness of ‘Ava’ and ‘Fall In Love With Me’. Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in ‘When You Look At Her’, and ‘Nightingale’ unashamedly acknowledges Nancy & Lee.

No one else has the courage or talent to make music like this these days, so thank God for The Yearning.

Jeff Penczak