(Rounder)

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Madeleine Peyroux has a voice that's special. Quietly sultry and smoky, nonchalantly conversational yet also soothingly melodic and jazzily stylized, it has earned her deserved comparisons to Billie Holiday. Coupled with the choice in material by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Fred Neil and Joni Mitchell on her first two Larry Klein-produced Rounder albums, Careless Love and Half the Perfect World, she seemed a far more than half-perfect interpreter of post-rock standards. Good as they were, Bare Bones is a substantial jump forward.

She has had a hand in writing ten of the 11 tracks; and written one - "I Must Be Saved," lovely and wistful, like Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan - by herself. Klein again produces, as well as helping with the songwriting, and the arrangements are tastefully folk-jazz with rock underpinnings. Because he was married to Joni Mitchell and collaborated with her on her many attempts at singer-songwriter jazz, you can't help observing that Bare Bones sounds like the album Mitchell probably wanted to make after Court and Spark, had her spiky sensibilities not undermined the lyricism of her efforts.

Klein and Peyroux's "River of Tears," for instance, has a gorgeously dreamy romanticism; you can get lost in its fluidity. The title song, inspired by a book by Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, is one of two standouts co-written with Steely Dan's Walter Becker, and the gently-rockin' guitar work recalls "Do It Again." The other Becker-Klein-Peyroux tune, the irresistible "You Can't Do Me," has a Maria Muldaur-style naughtiness that includes the memorable lines, "screwed like a high-school cheerleader" and "spanked like a fly on a bar counter." Other songs, co-written by Joe Henry, David Batteau and Julian Coryell, are also strong - you'll hear the influences of Waits, Cohen, Mitchell, Randy Newman and others.

Standout Tracks: "Bare Bones," "Love and Treachery" STEVEN ROSEN