Mollie O’Brien – Things I Gave Away

Best known for the wonderful folk-inflected bluegrass records she cut with her brother Tim, Mollie O’Brien presents herself here as a bluesy jazz diva, with pleasant, occasionally sublime results.

The music, produced by Nina Gerber, is an eclectic blend of folky acoustic guitars, plaintive pianos, and saucy bass/drum arrangements similar to Joni Mitchell’s Blue and recent Holly Cole recordings. This style, both intimate and spacious, allows O’Brien plenty of room to maneuver her clear, vigorous voice, which has a mature, pensive sexuality.

While some of the tunes are familiar — Percy Mayfield’s “River’s Invitation”, Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw It Away”, Lennon/McCartney’s “You Won’t See Me” — O’Brien also fleshes out the inherent grandeur in a couple of obscure gems. She turns Kristina Olsen’s “Practicing Walking Away” into an exercise in melancholy worthy of Chet Baker, and the Randy Hadley/Charles John Quarto song “Train Time” becomes in her care a tender, gracious elegy that earns its poetic thesis: “Funny how a howling wind/Is at the mercy of the mandolin.”