Back in 2019, shortly before the artist residency shows where this video was filmed, CapitalBop featured Nicole Saphos in an installment of our CB Sessions series. In the video, Saphos describes her struggle to fit her music into a genre. She settles on “indie jazz”; it’s serviceable, but as is the case with most great artists, no label short enough to fit into a Spotify category heading can properly communicate what’s going on when Saphos launches into a set with her band.
The “indie” part is immediately evident: Saphos’ vocal tone and lyric-writing bear more immediate resemblance to Fiona Apple or Regina Spektor than to Abbey Lincoln or Ella Fitzgerald. And her writing thrives in that vein: the lyrics are pithy and elegant, and the harmonies and melodies are accessible yet rich.
But where the “jazz” comes in is, for me, where things get really interesting. Saphos was a gigging bassist before she started into the singer-songwriter vein, and the way she runs her bandstand shows it. Her fellow musicians (in this video, the classic trio of Saphos, her husband Ele Rubenstein on drums, and longtime collaborator John Lee on guitar) are given tons of room to stretch out, both when soloing and when “comping” behind the melodies, in a way that makes them feel like deeper contributors than your average indie pop backing band. The thing that ties together the jazz bandstand — attention, trust and communication between band members, and the magical spontaneity that follows — is what makes this group so much fun to watch, whether in person or online. // Jamie Sandel, CapitalBop