Brad Mehldau - Largo

For this album, Mehldau and producer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith, Mac Miller) experimented with electronic instrumentation on originals and borrowed tunes (including Radiohead’s ‘Paranoid Android’ and The Beatles’ ‘Dear Prudence’). It was the first record of Mehldau’s that departed from either the piano trio or solo format, and it can be seen as the culmination of musical experiences that he gathered while living in Los Angeles, most notably the music he heard at Largo, the club in Hollywood, which he went to regularly and pays tribute to in the title of the record.

Mehldau explained, “I heard a lot of terrific singer-songwriters there for the first time – people like Rufus Wainright, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith and Aimee Mann. I got re-introduced to how beautiful a good pop song can be through hearing them. Its depth is more about pairing something down, chiseling it into a strong, succinct statement – very different than jazz, which for me is often about going out on a limb and staying there.”