Veronica Nunn Sings Michael Franks

Hands down, my favorite listening experience this year is Veronica Nunn's 2010 recording The Art of Michael Franks. I've been exploring the jazz-inflected singer-songwriter Franks over the last several months, inspired by hearing his song "When She Is Mine," which features this wicked cool couplet: "Everywhere the lady goes, sunshine follows / All her men return to her, like Capistrano swallows." Now that's a rhyme worthy of Ira Gershwin or Cole Porter. Digging into his body of work, I found him to be the most literate of songwriters. If you like craft, and I do, you will like him. His wispy voice may be an acquired taste but it suits the music. At any rate, I discovered that he often works with the vocalist Veronica Nunn, who recorded the aforementioned album devoted to his work. Here is one of my favorite cuts, a duet with Franks that nonchalantly references the myth of Icarus, Joseph Conrad, and the sui generis painter Henri Rousseau, with bonus points for including a reference to spider monkeys. If that all sounds too clever, well, it's not. The song is moving and true, and Nunn's vocals, here as throughout the record, are of surpassing beauty.