- The LA singer-songwriter enriches her once a-capella work with beautiful acoustic arrangements and electronic flourishes.
- San Francisco-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin is best known for her contributions to making a capella jammers a thing once again. On her 2019 EP You + I, produced by her brother Taylor McFerrin, the savvy, vocal-based instrumentalist began to stretch. Her unique style incorporates elements of jazz, blues, gospel, minimalism, disco, and whatever else she keeps in her studied yet very improvisational coffers.
Her surname is significant. For some, it's associated Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy, the first-ever a cappella single to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, displacing "Sweet Child o' Mine" and epitomizing a specific period in the late '80s. For non-squares, however—hip, in-the-know jazz and folk aficionados, those who respect and revere vocalists such as landmark Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, those who only require a microphone and an imagination—just the name McFerrin should infuse some energy into the chat.
I covered a Bobby McFerrin Voicestra show back in the day. It was him with several other vocalists celebrating the power of voice. It was experimental vocal jazz work that stayed in your chest—a life-affirming presentation of improvisational wit. Madison, Bobby's daughter, is drawing on and extending that lineage, and she darts forward on her path with debut album I Hope You Can Forgive Me. That deep bench assemblage, a thickness, she packs matches up on the butterflies and jitters duet "Run," a duet moment shared with her father, Bobby McFerrin. As an old-school drum & bass head, I'm anticipating a Calibre remix any day now—it's there, hidden deep within the score.
I Hope You Can Forgive Me, ten songs under a half hour that move quickly but stay with you long after, is a full-fledged real-time resume that demonstrates how complex rhythms and careful arrangements can elevate the human voice to the ultimate instrument. We're talking Bay Area's famed weather condition Karl The Fog-type atmosphere here. The generations circle each other and move about, conducting vocal gymnastics, melding talents and creating extraterrestrial tendrils of melody. McFerrin cycles through the vocal characteristics and syles she's become associated with over her brief yet animated career: a capella queen, ambient ingénue and pastel R&B siren.
This debut album pirouettes around the stumbling blocks that come as you advance in life—songs like "Utah," which discusses where a couple should live and navigates a difference of opinion within a relationship. These moments offer a sheen of approachability amidst the experimentation around them, from the nautical sound bath of frequencies that opens the album with "Deep Sea" to the folky, acoustic guitar-driven "Fleeting Melodies," which hints at classic Joni Mitchell records from the '70s as a hat tip of sorts.
This is renaissance listening at its finest. McFerrin keeps the familiar and the ultramodern touches side by side. The way this genre-bending melodist organizes her vocal army of one, and how she can pivot on a dime, is a marvel to behold. On "God Herself," she sings, "You gon' see me and believe in God herself." I'm glad it's not directed at me. But it's the atmosphere—not inherited talent but innate faculty. She does, after all, have it in her DNA. It's her application and her mastery that's made her enhance that surname.
Tracklist01. Deep Sea
02. Fleeting Melodies
03. Testify
04. Run
05. God Herself
06. OMW
07. (Please Don't) Leave Me Now
08. Stay Away (From Me)
09. Utah
10. Goodnight