Anita Wardell, the Australia-raised vocalist who appeared on the UK scene in the 1990s, makes albums that deploy familiar vocal-jazz methods and plenty of well-travelled standard songs, but also demonstrate a real care for her art. This set finds her accompanied by a sophisticated quintet led by her regular pianist Robin Aspland, on a repertoire mixing standards such as You're My Thrill and Without a Song with material by Pat Metheny, Bobby Hutcherson, Hermeto Pascoal and Stevie Wonder. Wardell's own lyrics are confidingly delivered over the country-song sway of Metheny's and Lyle Mays' Travels/The Road, and You're My Thrill stretches and swoops between an eerily distracted hover and straight jazz time. Pascoal's Frevo Em Maceio is a vehicle for Wardell's boppish agility, skipping flutelike over the mercurial melody, and she quietly caresses the meanings out of Stevie Wonder's Superwoman with an expertise that never betrays a hint of artifice. An unobtrusively classy vocal album. ~ John Fordham