So I’m listening my way through a batch of new CDs - singer-songwriters, bands, artists from pop to blues to Americana - and I’m frowning. Nice guitar parts. . .good lyrics on that one. . .now that’s a groove. . .but where are the voices? An awful lot of contemporary music is loaded up with instrumental wizardry, woefully short on plain old great singing. Makes me want to take out an early Tony Bennett, or a mid-career Rosemary Clooney, or a k.d. lang, or a Joan Osborne - any one of those singers with vocal chops out front and compelling enough to excuse a syrupy orchestration or a sappy lyric (all of the above have been caught singing in those unfortunate circumstances).

Then along comes Angela McKenzie’s “9/Nine,” and I am happily surprised. It’s a singer’s CD, an album full of a confident, comfortable voice, a voice that treats each song as an opportunity to reveal emotion and self, a voice that sounds at home with song. Clean acoustic arrangements here, no thumping bass-and-drum, no braying chorus.
This is a CD to savor, like a box of chocolates: “oooh, I like that one. . .wow, I didn’t think they made that kind anymore. . .gimme another like that.” McKenzie has some good material to work with, including a handful of tunes by Diane Scanlon and Eve Nelson, writers for the late diva Eva Cassidy. Festival and club favorite Holly Figueroa contributes “Hard,” a standout for McKenzie’s supple voice.

Canadian native Angela McKenzie came to New York with a mission: to use her music to battle hunger and poverty. Her own charitable foundation, The AMcK Initiative, is the vehicle for that struggle. And the gas in the tank is “9/Nine,” with a portion of the money going to the nonprofit Initiative. I like that. And to make it even better, the music is rich, seductive, warm and friendly. I suggest the following: order it (there’s information on the site about how to get it). . .drop it into your CD player, settle back and get to know the pleasures of a singer at work. . .tell your friends.