Jenny Toomey – Tempting: The Songs Of Franklin Bruno
On her second solo album in as many years, tireless former Tsunami frontwoman/D.I.Y. pioneer Jenny Toomey tackles the catalog of Franklin Bruno, former leader of indie-pop band Nothing Painted Blue. A current solo artist and sometime journalist, Bruno writes witty and expansive songs that place him somewhere between Noel Coward and Gordon Gano. He fits both of the requirements for a tribute album: He’s appropriately obscure and almost extravagantly talented.
Toomey, shorn almost entirely of the self-consciousness that marked last year’s Antidote, is smart enough to make the most of it. Backed by a loose collective of violinists, pianists and castanet players that includes members of Calexico and Bruno himself, Toomey converts the pared-down, simple arrangements of Bruno’s originals into a swirling mixture of flamenco, indie folk, bossa nova and swing.
Toomey has always been less a naturally gifted singer and songwriter than a force of nature, and she brings little more to these songs than her obvious affection for them and a powerful will — but it’s enough. A rollicking duet with Calexico’s Joey Burns on the 1940s-reminiscent “Let’s Stay In” continues Toomey’s recent flirtation with horns, to stunning effect, while the Spanish-influenced “Your Inarticulate Boyfriend” (“Why don’t you take up ventriloquism?/Why don’t you just sit him on your knee?”) is every bit as good as you’d imagine it would be.