Holly Cole talks quickly during interviews, like she's an old friend, with an urgency and wit which belie the sexy, sun-drenched feel to her first album of jazz standards in six years.
Her 13th release is a leisurely ode to Canada's glorious summer months, though that's not what the Canadian jazz singer first intended.
Then she started looking at the songs she'd picked: A Cottage for Sale, Irving Berlin's Heatwave, Lazy Afternoon and Cole Porter's Too Darn Hot.
Shade also features two standouts: A breathtaking cover of Brian Wilson's God Only Knows and a bittersweet rendition of Rogers and Hammerstein's We Kiss in a Shadow.
Neither song is specifically about summer, but both seem to conjure up the elusive season in every other way.
"I thought, 'That's funny, that's interesting, I didn't even know I'd done that,' " she explained, during a recent phone interview.
"So I called my manager and asked 'when are we releasing this album,' hoping he wouldn't say 'January.' "
SUMMER'S IMPACT
From the stillness of a heat wave to a day at the beach, Cole says summer may have even more of an impact on residents of a country associated with the dead of winter.
"Summer is a very important event in this country and across the board, I think," she said. "All of us have strong memories and emotions that are related to summer."
Things got a little surreal when Cole set out for the CD's cover shoot. Not only was it attempted outdoors in a Toronto heat wave, but amidst a strange aphid infestation.
"That photo did not make the cover, believe me," she laughs. "Can you imagine airbrushing 800,000 aphids off my face?"
The Halifax-born singer first came to attention 14 years ago with her debut, an EP called Christmas Blues. Since then she's sold close to a million records, becoming a favourite in Canada and abroad, particularly Japan and Europe.
TRIO REUNITED
Shade reunites Cole with the rest of her Holly Cole Trio, pianist Aaron Davis and string bassist David Piltch. It also marks Cole taking over the role of producer, which turned out to be an exhilarating and exhausting process where she worried about everything from the strength of her voice to financing.
"When there's somebody running the show, if you have a question, you know there's somebody to ask and even if you don't, you know there's someone to answer to," says Cole.
"I've always been active on the creative side. It's one thing to chime in when you feel like it's a creative idea and another thing when you're responsible for all of them."
Cole wrote a neat little intro and extro to the first song on the album, Heatwave, suggesting promise as a composer she argues likely won't come to fruition.
"I don't really have the burning desire to write like some people do. I've written a few songs and not recorded them. I thought 'they're not good enough,' " said Cole. "Some people cook and some people sew and it's not that common people are good at both things."
