The Leishman Songbook
October 7, 2017Bed Time
“Gina Leishman’s bedtime stories aren’t like Mother Goose’s. Instead of singing baby to sleep, she enfolds us grown-ups in a warm nighty-night blanket which smells faintly of spilt cocktails and cigarette smoke. Her voice also curls through the air like the smoke from a cigarette left in an ashtray in some after hours jazz club…”
– Stephen Fruitman, Sonomu.net
“Gina Leishman’s Bed Time is a delicious mix of eclectic jazz songs, punctuated by Leishman’s sometimes theatrical and sometimes sensual interpretation. Her ukulele work is particularly fine. Her sense of timing is impeccable and the CD flows from one tune to the next in a finely textured manner that definitely grows on you with repeated listenings… First rate jazz composer and singer.” ***** (5 stars)
– iTunes
“Smoky jazz that creeps and slithers, weaves and winds around dark, deep textures, venturing into the highly-wooded territory of quirky chamber pop. With wispy vocals Leishman takes her listener beyond the expected and typical into hidden corners and shadowy alleys. Colorful intrumentation includes glasses and accordion, making for an album that smoothly winds between the eerie and the delicate. A distinctively vivid album.”
– CD Baby
“…stripped down and spacious, these songs hover like ghosts and drift in eerie, suspended shadows… Perfect late night listening, melancholy, moody, elegant and rather enchanting, as well.”
–Downtown Music Gallery
In My Skin
“…cherishing the journey as much as the destination, Leishman charmingly unfurls her narratives, revealing another stop along her picturesque musical road.”
– Sean Fitzell, AllAboutJazz.com
“Those who know Kamikaze Ground Crew leader Gina Leishman as a versatile multi-instrumentalist—a ‘musician who sings,’ in her own estimation—might be taken aback by the gently infectious original songs on her latest release, In My Skin. As a bandleader, she deploys her instrumental collaborators like a painter handling colors on a palette…”
– Time Out, Oct 2007
“Like [Tom] Waits, Leishman has a knack for a turn of phrase. Her lost loves don’t deter her merriment… and, like Waits, she has the good sense to strip her arrangements down to this simple string quartet, accompanied by sparse violin, bass, and guitar. Her vinegary lyrics are for self described hammock songs, strummed and tasting somewhat acerbic. Love is sometimes lost; mostly the femme fatale is gone before she loses the game…”
– Mark Corroto, AllAboutJazz.com