Although the melodies on Cooling’s label debut for GRP are so smooth and radio-friendly that you could swear you’ve heard them before, it is the nuance and personality that informs her music that make this project so pleasing. First and foremost is that Cooling is a female jazz guitarist, and an accomplished one at that, making her an anomaly in what has traditionally been an almost exclusively male club. Second are the textures Cooling uses to decorate her pop/jazz compositions, from her own R&B-influenced vocals on “Mm-Mm Good” (which itself features a joyful scat from Al Jarreau) to the Brazilian rhythms underlying many of the tracks. In fact, as pleasantly uplifting as this project is, there is a sense that Cooling is walking the line between accessibility and artistry perhaps a bit too closely, and that she has an even deeper well of creativity to draw from.—SG
