Perfect Alibi - Sunday Times

Jazz-lovers tend to grow very possessive about Claire Martin. And who can blame them, since she is one of the few world-class singers this country has produced. Just as she has always had an eye for the rarer jazz standard, Martin - like Quincy Jones - has always enjoyed crossing the tracks into the mainstream. Noel Gallagher dropped by with his guitar on last year's "Take My Heart", and Martin continues in husky pop vein here. She was an early champion of that cult voice, the late Eva Cassidy, so it would be only fair if some of the listeners who caught up with Cassidy via the Radio 2 playlist should now give Martin a turn. Highlights range from Phoebe Snow's Inspired Insanity to the melancholia of Shadowville, from the new songwriter Dede Madden. Martin's nonconformist impulses also deliver a memorably off-beat rendition of Hendrix's Up From The Skies.