Layla Tomomi Sakai: Stolen Moments
Singer Layla Tomomi Sakai’s Stolen Moments is a 27-minute album from 2019, a follow-up to her two previous releases from 2016 and 2018 with a consistently pleasing and familiar core sound. That sound of Sakai, introduced on her debut album Whisper Not, is based on her intimate vocal/guitar/trumpet trio with Yuichiro Hiraoka on guitar and Ryuichi Takase on trumpet. Her second album The Island expanded the trio with more accompanying players, a pattern which continues here on Stolen Moments as her guest musicians create forms from duos to sextets on the different songs.
It’s a simple and sweet affair, a short set of four-to-five-minute songs based around Sakai’s classy, low-key, and easy-to-love delivery. A five-piece band starts strong with track #1 “Stolen Moments”, a combo sound that reappears on the attention-getting track #4 “I’ve Got Just About Everything”. Starting with a rubato vocal/guitar intro, this take then races along and includes a dynamic three-player solo section in the middle, bracketed by Sakai singing in her attractively laid-back, confident yet understated style.
The full band sound is balanced with small duo and trio moments such as on the brisk and good-feeling #2 “You’re My Everything”, where guitarist Hiraoka’s walking bass and chords fingerstyle shines. Elegantly powerful in their quiet simplicity are the romantic ballads #3 “I’ve Got a Crush On You” and the closer #6 “That’s All”, reminding us that sometimes all you need is uncomplicated jazz for a good feeling and a nice atmosphere delivered by great musicians and soothing vocals… that’s all.
(On a tangent, I noticed that Stolen Moments includes some song titles with mild wordplay-adjacent connections for a relatively short album: The two middle song titles start with the same words I’ve Got with #3 “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and #4 “I’ve Got Just About Everything”. Additionally, a different pair of song titles contains the word Everything with #2 “You’re My Everything” and #4 “I’ve Got Just About Everything”. Pure chance, most likely, but I wondered if adding other songs with similar titles could create an interesting concept. Add the standards “I’ve Got the World on a String”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”, “I’ve Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)”, and “I Got Rhythm”. Then for Everything, consider “Everything Happens to Me”, “Everything I Have Is Yours”, “Everything I’ve Got (Belongs to You)”, “Everything I Love”, and Chick Corea’s “You’ve Everything” with its song title already incredibly similar to #2 “You’re My Everything”. Maybe a title for the resulting concept album such as Everything I’ve Got, or I’ve Got Everything, would be the perfect wrapping. But I digress…)
Stolen Moments by Layla Tomomi Sakai
Layla Tomomi Sakai - vocal
Yuichiro Hiraoka - guitar
Ryuichi Takase - trumpet
Hideaki Nakaji - trombone
Heitetsu Rin - piano
Keisuke Furuki - bass
Ryo Saito - drums
Released in 2019 on Laydrunker Records as Layla-003.
Names in Japanese: 坂井レイラ知美 (Sakai Layla Tomomi) 平岡遊一郎 (Hiraoka Yuichiro) 高瀬龍一 (Takase Ryuichi) 中路英明 (Nakaji Hideaki) リンヘイテツ (Rin Heitetsu) 古木佳祐 (Furuki Keisuke) 斉藤良 (Saito Ryo)
Related Albums
Layla Tomomi Sakai: Whisper Not (2016)
Layla Tomomi Sakai: The Island (2018)
Audio and Video
Excerpt from “Stolen Moments”, track #1 on this album: