Dayna Kurtz

Beautiful Yesterday

(Kismet Records)

One listen to singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz’s new album makes you wonder where and how she’s been hiding all this time. The New Jersey native, who took the National Academy of Songwriters’ Female Songwriter of the Year in 1997, hasn’t really been hiding as much as building to this, her third record. Having earned the respect of her peers on two previous albums, including 2002’s criminally undervalued Postcards From Downtown, the husky-voiced Kurtz makes her push impressively on the gorgeous Beautiful Yesterday, which even features an appearance from Norah Jones on a laid-back jazzy cover of Duke Ellington’s “I Got it Bad (And That Ain’t Good).” Mixing originals like the sultry torch song “Love Where Did You Go” with a collection of eclectic covers, including Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” and a slightly funked-up version of Prince’s “Joy in Repetition,” Kurtz shows the full range of her abilities on Beautiful Yesterday. With Beautiful Yesterday, it’s time for everybody else to get in on the secret musicians have known about for years.

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For Fans of:

Norah Jones, Come Away With Me

Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine

Annie Lennox, Diva