Stigers’ penchant for Randy Newman gems, begun in 2001 with “Marie” on Baby Plays Around, continued the following year with “It’s So Hard Living Without You” (on Secret Heart) and further explored two years ago with the title track from I Think It’s Going to Rain Today, proceeds here with a stunningly spare (Stigers backed solely by Goldings) “Real Emotional Girl.” The pair proves equally captivating on a hauntingly fog-bound reading of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” and a bluesy wade through Emmylou Harris’ “I Don’t Want to Talk About It Now.” As on his previous disc, which included a superb, slow-thawing “Don’t Think Twice,” Stigers dips into the Dylan songbook, coming up with a mink-lined “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” (one of five tracks featuring the incomparable John Pizzarelli on guitar). It is, in its seductively sophisticated way, as appealing as Dylan’s more pastoral original.

The delights continue with Stephin Merritt’s clever “As You Turn to Go” (a sanguine adieu tune on par with “Thanks for the Memory”), Mose Allison’s brilliantly biting “Your Mind Is On Vacation,” a breezily lissome “Stardust” and Stigers’ own “I Only Want to Be With You” (co-written with his brother, Jake), a homesick lament that is, both structurally and thematically, surprisingly similar to Michael Buble’s recent “Home.” It’s all vintage Stigers.

- Christopher Loudon

Stigers’ first recording for Concord, Baby Plays Around, consisted mostly of standards from the Great American Songbook, like “All The Thing You Are,” and jazz standards like “Centerpiece.” However, with that first Concord recording, Stigers already set up the style for CD’s to follow, especially due to the fact that he started working with keyboardist Larry Goldings. Their collaboration led to three more CD’s, even though the sidemen evolved to the present configuration with musicians like Matt Wilson and Ben Allison from the Jazz Composers Collective. Increasingly, Stigers has grown to embrace an unpredictable assortment of songs that suit his personality, rather than fit into a mold. Particularly with his last CD, You Inspire Me, Stigers started to incorporate music that inspired him, such as country songs like “Crazy Moon” or pop music from The Beatles or Billy Joel. Another one of the constants through Stigers’ series of Concord albums has been his bringing to light some of Randy Newman’s under-appreciated songs like the beautiful “Marie” or “It’s So Hard Living Without You.”

All of those elements mesh on I Think It’s Going To Rain Today, on which Stigers, now in his stride, has collected, and composed, a series of songs that appeal to him, and by extension, to his listeners too. So, now the title song of Stigers’ CD is a Newman song this time, and surprisingly to those who associate Newman forever with his most popular song, “Short People,” the song is sensitive and even poetic to a degree that inspires a poignant arrangement consisting of Goldings on piano backing up Stigers’ word about “human kindness overflowing” and “skies streaked with gray.” In contrast, though, Stigers and Goldings rearrange Mose Allison’s classic “Everybody Cryin’ Mercy,” written during the Vietnam War, but topical once again now that the U.S. is involved in another war as the lyrics recall a “bad news situation, sure ’nuff getting worse.” And Stigers’ appreciation of perfectly expressed country/Western music appears in the form of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” given flavor by Pete McCann’s languorous guitar lines. Even when Stigers sings a standard on I Think It’s Going To Rain Today, it’s yet another song deserving a reconsideration, Cy Coleman’s “It Amazes Me,” popularized by Blossom Dearie more than forty years ago. Not only does Stigers’ delivery bring out the self-deprecating humor of the song, but also one can imagine Dearie once again provoking a smile with: “My height…/Just average./My weight…/Just average./My my IQ is/As you estimate/Just average./But evidently, she does not agree./Consequently, if I seem at sea./It amazes me/It simply amazes me/What she sees in me/Dazzles me/Dazes me.”

And one notices the growth in Stigers’ songwriting depth from “Swingin’ Down At 10th & Main” to “Lullaby On The Hudson,” to which Stigers supplied the words to the melody that Goldings wrote. Recalling his first night with his just-born daughter, Stigers sings of “seeing the future in her eyes” and the fact that “I’ll remember this forever.” This heartfelt personal quality of the CD distinguishes it from Stigers’ earlier recordings, both on his own compositions, and in his choices of others’ songs. What we’re seeing is a path that Stigers is taking to a thematic and musical destination that even he may not foresee yet as his music adapts to the changing circumstances of his life.