She takes this deft conceptualism even further on Cole Porter's "I Concentrate on You," framing her delicate a cappella vocals with nature sounds, including a seagull's call and waves softly hitting a beach. One could almost take her whistling intro "How About You" for granted until she brings it back, whistling along with her vocals at the end. That said, the minimalist vibe belies McKay's knack for conceptual, almost cinematic presentation. Even when she goes for a more robust arrangement, playing bass and ukulele on "Accentuate the Positive," the result sounds pleasingly spontaneous.
In particular, her swaying take on "Up a Lazy River" evokes the feel of relaxed summer's day as she sings while strumming a ukulele. There's a laid-back, bedroom cabaret quality to these performances, as if McKay is flipping through one of her favorite song books and giving off-the-cuff takes on songs that catch her fancy. Along with singing, she also plays all the instruments here, accompanying herself at various times on piano, ukulele, bass, Fender Rhodes, and even Theremin. As with Sister Orchid, here McKay performs a handful of beloved classic songs in a distinctly spare style. The Broadway-tested McKay also displays her love of cabaret as she intersperses crowd chatter and clinking glasses to theatrical effect on "Everything Happens to Me." Despite her penchant for artifice, McKay reveals her strong musical chops on Sister Orchid, launching into a mad-eyed boogie-woogie section on "Where or When" and delivering a spine-tingling, synth-accented take on "In a Sentimental Mood" that conjures the neon-soaked atmosphere of David Lynch's Twin Peaks.On the heels of her atmospheric 2018 standards album Sister Orchid, singer/pianist Nellie McKay offers an equally lowkey and misty follow-up EP with 2019's Bagatelles. There are also jaunty bits of ukulele, as on "Lazybones," which also features her overdubbed backing vocals.
Primarily, these are spare arrangements, often just McKay accompanying herself on piano, as on the haunting "Angel Eyes." Elsewhere, as on her dusky reading of "Where or When," she weaves in a mournful cello. Allen has worked with a bevy of jazz, folk, and pop artists including Kurt Elling, José James, Ingrid Michaelson, Andrew Bird, and others, and brings a soft, natural warmth that never interferes with McKay's performance. McKay, who arranged and played all of the songs on Sister Orchid, recorded the album in New York with engineer Chris Allen. Here, McKay takes a deftly straightforward approach, performing a set of well-chosen standards that wouldn't be out of place on an album by Blossom Dearie (another McKay touchstone) from the 1950s. Similarly, on 2015's My Weekly Reader, McKay took on some of her favorite '60s pop tunes by bands like the Kinks, Herman's Hermits, Moby Grape, and others. The closest the idiosyncratic singer/songwriter had gotten previously was her brightly attenuated 2009 Doris Day tribute, Normal as Blueberry Pie, which found her investigating songs heavily associated with the iconic actress and singer.
Given her jazz-influenced sound and knack for thoughtfully chosen cover songs, it's surprising that Nellie McKay had never released a complete jazz standards album until 2018's smoky, intimately rendered Sister Orchid.