"I asked the boy for a few kind words / He gave me a novel instead. . ."

The latest release by chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux, Half the Perfect World, takes two parts Billie Holiday and one part Leonard Cohen, adds a dash of Tom Waits, shakes the mixture (no stirring, please), and pours it back out as the kind of cocktail that makes you drink one too many before you realize you should go home to reality. Extremely palatable, yes, and sweet, but with an edge. Try to ignore the couple of tracks with a funny aftertaste, because the majority of these songs are so very, very delicious.

Peyroux is often compared to Billie Holiday. It's easy to hear why; her vocals slide through that same breathy, near-off-key realm that seems like it shouldn't work. It doesn't, for many (as is nightly demonstrated in karaoke bars around the world), but with the right happy combination of skill and luck, it's fantastic; it's Chet Baker, baby! It's Macy Gray, Astrud Gilberto, Leonard Cohen...and it's Madeleine Peyroux.

I realize appreciation of this kind of stylized rendering is highly subjective. That very subjectivity explains why opera is one person's caramel cheesecake and the next person's cod-liver oil. It's also probably why my least favorite track on this disc is Peyroux's duet with k.d. lang on Joni Mitchell's "River." I greatly admire Ms. lang, but for me, she's lumped in with a whole group of excellent musicians (hello, Mr. Lovett, good to see you; Mr. Nelson...may I call you Willie?) whom I adore from afar, but whose music sets my teeth on edge. It's nobody's fault, really; I think I'm allergic to most things smacking of country, which Ms. lang's stylings do. I understand some people (amazing, but true!) feel allergic to Miles Davis or Pentangle or The Clash. Ahh, the miracle of human diversity.

Only four tracks of the disc's twelve are co-written by Peyroux, among them one of my favorites ("I'm All Right"--it has some sweet ukulele bits that give it an old-fashioned sound) and one of my least favorites ("A Little Bit", which follows "River" on the disc and also sounds more country than blues or jazz). But the collection overall is held together by the keyboard elements. Sure, 'piano' is one of the instruments listed on many of the songs, but it's outnumbered by the mentions of Hammond Organ, Wurlitzer Piano, Estey Organ, and Celeste. It's the skillful, understated use of these that lends the overall air of intimacy to Peyroux's music, and compliments her softly raspy voice without overpowering it.

I'm a fan of image-evoking words, so the lyrics which enchanted me most the first time 'round, such as those from Leonard Cohen's "Blue Alert" and "Half the Perfect World" and "The Heart of Saturday Night" by Tom Waits, still delight me the most. I don't understand enough French to say I'm 'into' the lyrics of Serge Gainsbourg's "La Javanaise," but Peyroux's cover of it has the seductive quality of the original, and I love to hear her sing in French. I mean, c'mon; everything sounds better in French.

It's hard not to compare Half the Perfect World to Peyroux's fabulous previous release Careless Love. The best tracks on this new disc ("Smile," "La Javanaise," "Blue Alert," and "I'm All Right") evoke the same sense of satisfaction derived from delectable vices only vicariously experienced through the medium of music. As when I first heard Careless Love, I listen to these new recordings and I'm transported to a smoky, dimly-lit room in some distant basement speakeasy on some foreign planet in some other decade. I taste the bite of mellow alien whiskey on my tongue, and feel the acrid smoke as it curls from my nostrils and from the cigarette balanced between my fingers. My eyelids drift half-shut as I allow the hand of some attractive, anonymous stranger to stroke my garter-belted thigh, and I sigh as the silk-velvet of my dress moves across my ribs.

And in the background, Madeleine Peyroux sings those songs of pain and love.