Review: Nicole Zuraitis’ ‘The Devil I Knew’

As a vocalist, pianist, and songwriter Nicole Zuraitis is a triple threat. Yet the two-time Grammy-winner often goes criminally undermentioned in conversations about female jazz singers. Now, Zuraitis takes the most ambitious step of her career with the sprawling twenty-track, five-suite concept album The Devil I Knew (La Reserve, 2026), which digs deep into reflections on a lost relationship. In one sense, the record mirrors the proverbial five stages of grief, except that here they are: denial, accountability, grief, healing, and self-discovery.  Fear not, it’s not autobiographical; Zuraitis has a strong marriage with her husband and drummer, Dan Pugagh. But if there is any justice, it should take her to another level in terms of recognition.

From the liner notes, Zuraitis states, “I wanted this album to live in opposition to the world we are currently drowning in–one ruled by speed, performance, and algorithms that reward detachment. The Devil I Knew lends the other way. Toward feeling. Toward contradiction. Towards messiness. It embraces excess, vulnerability, and emotional risk in a time that keeps asking us to be smaller, quieter, and easier to process. This music insists on being human–flawed, dramatic, intimate, and unoptimized. Robots can’t feel shame…yet.”

While Zuraitis is sparing no details, there’s far more to the project than its broader concept. She fuses her music with literature and poetry, with the poems – written by famous female writers, including Dorothy Parker, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sara Teasdale, and Johanna Telander – serving as interludes between suites. She also tapped a veritable who’s who of jazz musicians, including: bassist and steadfast collaborator Christian McBride, bassist Sam Weber, saxophonist Donny McCaslin, guitarists Gilad Hekselman, Idan Morim, Dean Parks, and Scott Sharrad; and keyboardists Larry Goldings, Jon Cowherd, and David Cook. These musicians receive several soloing spots, allowing their distinctive voices to come through. Each track features different personnel with Pugach serving as the only consistent voice, besides the leader’s, throughout. Arrangements vary significantly too, spanning trios, orchestral balladry, and cinematic storytelling. Jerry Hey arranged a four-piece horn section while Vince Mendoza arranged strings by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra. Vocal arrangements from Sirntip and Vivienne Aerts add further texture. The mastering engineer is the acclaimed Bernie Grundman. Zuraitis co-produced the
album with famed producer Larry Klein, while Susan Bloomberg is the executive producer.

Zuraitis wrote eighteen of the twenty tracks, many by herself and some with co-writers. Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Larry Klein wrote “Let Us Hang,” while “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes) is a Hoagy Carmichael standard. Zuraitis plays piano or Rhodes on all but three tracks. The first part begins with “The Mirror,” adapting Dorothy Parker’s lyrics. This begins the denial stage with McBride and Goldings featured on “Won’t Make It Out Alive,” while the bluesy “Call My Name (I Dare You)” features Sharrad (Little Feat) and Cowherd on organ. “He’s a Demon, He’s a Devil, He’s a Doll” features McBride’s trademark bass and the four-piece horn section in a snappy, slightly “old school” arrangement and some lyrics adopted from Betty Hutton’s hit in the ‘50s.

Telander’s “The Martyr” begins Part II, as thoughts turn more inward. The difficult truth and memories of places take life in “Two Steps Back (The Overlap),” which features McCaslin, Morim, and Cowherd on organ. The ballad “Wish I Could Love You,” written with four co-writers, stands out as one of Zuraitis’ most beautiful, vulnerably emotional performances. Hekselman’s distinctive guitar impressively supports the pining vocal in “Never a Mistake” where Zuraitis well demonstrates her expansive vocal range and command of dynamics.

Part III’s poem, “The Malediction,” is by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. (“Can you blame me that my heart grew cold/That the tempted, tempter turned/When he was feted and caressed/And I was coldly spurned?”) The title track continues down this emotional path of vulnerability with McBride, Hekselman, and McCaslin featured. McBride and Hekselman remain amidst the strings for the reflective ballad “All That’s Left,” another potent vocal performance.  “Vice Versa” begins as a piano ballad but swells and recedes, with Goldings, Cowherd, Parks, Weber, and Morim all contributing to the dense sonic layers.

 

Part IV begins a shift toward acceptance and clarity, beginning with Dickinson’s poem, “The Reckoning.” Morim, Weber, Cowherd, and Klein (on Wurlitzer) develop a subtle groove on “The Hardest Part,” lifting it into more uplifting tones than the previous tracks. “It Never Goes Away” sounds a bit like a lullaby as she ponders that lingering feeling when alone, rendered by a spare accompaniment, imbued by Cowherd’s weird-sounding Italian electric organ and tasteful guitar licks by Morim. The funky Becker/Klein “Let Us Hang” noticeably differs from Zuraitis’s writing. But it is one of the most rollicking tracks replete with horns and Klein’s filthy bass lines, and Cowherd’s Wurlitzer.

Part V commences with Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Requiem”: “I know my mind, and I have made my choice/Not from your temper does my doom depend/Love me or love me not, you have no voice/In his, which is my portion to the end.” “Back to You” features a neo-soul groove powered by Parks, Sharrad, and Goldings. It signifies some of the first signs of independence, which are overtly expressed in Carmichael’s standard, swathed in an orchestral arrangement. “Epilogue” finds Zuraitis reciting the spoken word of Sara Teasdale (“I  shall take my scattered selves and make them one.”) over David Cook’s piano.

The ambitious The Devil I Knew will have listeners delving into their own emotional journeys. It’s a master work, a crowning achievement from arguably the most creative female jazz vocalist today. Immerse yourself. Your view of female jazz vocalists may be forever changed.

‘The Devil I Knew’ is out now on La Reserve. It can be purchased on Bandcamp.