Elizabeth Shepherd - Heavy Falls the Night

Her last album, Parkdale, pushed the boundaries of jazz by mixing funk and blues with samba into a danceable groove. Here the Toronto singer-pianist, raised by Salvation Army ministers, branches out into adventurous pop. The hushed title sounds a lot like 1970s Joni Mitchell, while the rambunctious “Seven Bucks”—the price of a bed at a Toronto men’s shelter—is funky r&b. To top it off, Elizabeth dramatically reinterprets “Danny’s Song,” a 1972 hit for Anne Murray, the only secular artist she heard as a child.