‘Tapestry Unravelled’ is a beautiful and elegant re-working of songs from Carole King's beloved classic 1971 album Tapestry plus one original (Closing Time) from the BBC Jazz Awards Best Vocalist Christine Tobin and the highly acclaimed UK jazz pianist Liam Noble.'

Christine Tobin & Liam noble,
The Lot, Edinburgh ****
Rob Adams (Published on 15 Feb 2010)

How do you interpret an album as well known to so many people as Carole King’s multi-million selling Tapestry?

There’s the deconstruct/reconstruct method that would turn out songs bearing a passing resemblance to King’s blueprint. Or in these days of X-Factor karaoke, especially with a soul classic like (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman onboard, hiding the tune in a fog of melisma might win votes.

For Christine Tobin, the answer was simpler: just sing the songs as intended and with a vocal timbre as naturally winsome and singular as hers, the result is something at once familiar and captivatingly fresh. Tobin didn’t go into detail about the reasoning behind her forthcoming Tapestry Unravelled CD; the original is an album with close ties to her sister Deirdre, who died last year. But her connection with songs such as the eternally optimistic Beautiful and the more vulnerable Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow was obvious, and with Liam Noble’s piano accompaniments subtly emphasising the gospel flavour in much of King’s writing, the overall mood was decidedly intimate and personal. Being a jazz singer, Tobin likes to scat, which she did creatively and convincingly, and Noble’s powers of invention included more oblique references, particularly in his solo piano arrangement of Smack-water Jack.

Neither musician’s extemporisations strayed far from the songs’ essence, and even the supporting material, including two beautifully expressed original songs and a vibrant medley comprising Milton Nascimento’s Ponta de Areia and Steve Swallow’s She Was Young, sounded as if guided by the same impetus that caused Tobin to sing A Natural Woman with such soulful dignity.

5 ***** review in THE IRISH TIMES by RAY COMISKEY

CHRISTINE TOBIN & LIAM NOBLE

Tapestry Unravelled – CD of the Week

Trail Belle Records *****

Keeping it simple as well as good is one of the most difficult things in any art.
And it’s a sign of maturity when someone pulls it off as superbly as
Christine Tobin does, with the significant help of pianist Liam Noble.,
in this visit to one of the most celebrated pop
albums of all time: Carole Kings Tapestry (1972).

It’s also a surprise. As a singer and songwriter, Tobin has forged a
strikingly original voice out of diverse jazz, folk and classical influences,
and her albums have mostly featured her own richly suggestive writing.
On the rare times she has done material by, say, Dylan or Leonard Cohen,
it is reworked and transformed. But she takes the generally uncomples
vision of King’s Tapestry – songs of love, loneliness, relationships,
occasionally allegorical – and treats it with compelling,
visceral directness.

The original album is bound up with memories of Tobin’s sister,
who died last year and to whom the new one is dedicated, so in a sense
it’s a conduit for Tobin’s feelings about those memories and a way of
keeping them alive.

Personal resonances aside, there is the sheer quality of Tobin’s
performance and the collaboration with Noble that makes this album
so special. There’s a kind of alchemy at work, particularly in how she
uses her warmly distinctive voice, malleable, poised phrasing and
impeccable intonation to get inside the material and make it personal.
Even the most well-known songs (You’ve Got a Friend, Home Again, So Far Away,
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow) have their intimate, one-to-one feelings, tender,
sensual and vulnerable, renewed and intensified.

More assertive songs are similarly absorbed and refreshed.
It’s Too Late and the limited I Feel the Earth Move are delivered with
authority and plenty of oomph, while the yearning, gospel-flavoured
Way Over Yonder and the allegorical Tapestry unite a sense of
otherness with the feel of life lived.

Noble’s role as accompanist and soloist combines the individual
and the apt so well that it’s impossible to conceive of the album without him;
the folk ballad Smackwater Jack, with no vocal, is his solo feature.
Incidentally, the original album’s Where You Lead is left out:
its servile lyrics don’t chime with how women,
rightly, see themselves now.