As she showed on her auspicious 2010 release WomanChild, the singer is really not one to shirk a challenge. In what is the defining moment of this impressive live performance spread over two discs she looks up at two of the towers of the Great American Songbook – Gershwin's ‘My Man's Gone Now’ and Berlin's ‘Let's Face The Music And Dance’ – and scales the heights set by some of her predecessors with a poise and self-possession beyond her 27 summers. Indeed, the impression of a wizened old soul in a young body is greatly reinforced by the wide range of emotional nuance, from desolation to resignation via irony and devil-may-care abandon, that Salvant conveys in her modulations of phrase, some of which are sober and some bold, like an arched eyebrow by way of her voice. That the recording took place at no less historic a venue than the Village Vanguard lends a certain gravitas to the occasion, and the inclusion of a string section on several complementary studio tracks simply dignifies proceedings further. Retaining the able acoustic trio led by pianist Aaron Diehl that graced her previous releases, Salvant negotiates a largely standards-based repertoire with none of the trying-too-hard emphasis that can blight young pretenders. She sometimes, slightly à la Billie, skims the slow pace of introspective spoken word, as if she understands the homoerotic sub-text of Noel Coward's ‘Mad About The Boy’ and its tragedy in an era of criminalised homosexuality, just as much as she sees the relevance of ‘Si J'etais Blanche’ (‘If I Were White’), a song made famous in France by Josephine Baker in the 1930s, to a modern America bitterly divided along racial fault-lines. Salvant's ability to find such strong echoes of the present in the music of the past and invest each lyric with immense strength of character mark her out as an artist who has a grip on cultural history to match a talent rooted in the now.