"Don’t be fooled by Shelley Neill’s conservative Bostonian roots or her Melanie Griffith blondeness. Beneath those sunny curls is a head for the blues and a torch-singer sensibility that echoes such faded greats as Libby Holman and Ruth Etting. Envisioned as a companion piece to Neill’s estimable The Blues Runs Through It, the new Envisioning Blue serves up saucily revitalized treatments of… “Am I Blue,” “It Was Written in the Stars,” “Me and the Blues” and “Now’s the Time.” …her kickass “Don’t Explain,” swapping out Billie Holiday’s victimized sorrowfulness for strident dignity… And if you thought Etta James was the only one who could quicken your pulse with a scorching “At Last,” get set for a version so vigorous it could steam up the windows of Beacon Hill’s frostiest mansions."

allaboutjazz.com Review Excerpt

" For her third album for her Cobalt Blue Music label, Shelley Neill continues to explore the links between blues and vocal jazz with a list of songs that runs the calendar gamut from 1923 to the modern day. Backed by a quartet of Laszlo Gardony on piano, John Lockwood on bass, Yoron Israel on drums, and John Blake Jr. on violin, Neill applies her powerful, expressive style to songs that may not be strictly blues tunes, but which have a blues feel to them. Moreover, Neill's vocal style has a built-in empathy for yearning in it, giving everything she sings a sort of blues/R&B inflection, making the interpretations uniquely her own...Adding a violin to the session gives a sensation of poignancy, fitting well with the artistic thrust of the album. "Downhearted Blues," a favorite of Bessie Smith's, is given a modern dressing led by Israel's drums, without its traditional veneer. Similarly, the Billie Holiday classic "Strange Fruit" is given an avant-garde jazz introduction led by the heavy tremolo of Gardony's piano and the eerily pitched strings of Blake's violin. The intro consumes more than six and a half minutes of the ten and three-quarters minutes allotted for the tune, before Neill floats in singing in French before the rest of the accompaniment resumes. Different, to say the least. Blake's violin, when matched with the cry in Neill's rendering of "It Was Written in the Stars," makes it a first-rate cut. With each release, Neill has grown to a point where she is becoming a major interpreter of the American Songbook. "

Dave Nathan, All Music Guide Review Excerpt