soul music
Thomas H. Green
When Disclosure appeared a decade ago, they were a necessary antidote to the rank gorgonzola of EDM, which was turning club music into a garish mire of musical infantilism. These two deliberately faceless Surrey brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence, doffed their caps to the classic house sound but updated it to the 21st century, splashed it with garage and R&B, and never wandered too far from the party. Their third album, with assistance from impressively well-chosen collaborators, attempts the same but is too often trapped by its own tastefulness.The short of it is that the first half of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A skim though the track listing confirms that this is no typical soul compilation. Actress and some-time pop singer Connie Stevens crops up. So does Johnny Mathis. Such seeming quirks are fitting as Thom Bell was never a typical arranger, producer or songwriter. There’s much more to the story than the timeless O’Jays and Stylistics hits he created for Gamble and Huff’s label Philadelphia International Records.Ready Or Not – Thom Bell's Philly Soul Arrangements & Productions 1965–1978 collects 23 tracks which Bell arranged, produced or wrote, or any combination first two and the last. The Read more ...
joe.muggs
This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and fallings-out, coping with huge success and its aftermath – not to mention sex, drugs, mental illness and death. On top of that there’s a constant layer of narrative about the endless pressures of racism on black British musicians, told brilliantly both explicitly and in the micro-details of 1960s and '70s life.Maybe most devastating thing of all, though Read more ...
On the Record review - #MeToo turns its lens to the music industry, gives the mic to women of colour
Jill Chuah Masters
On the Record, the latest documentary from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (acclaimed directors of The Hunting Ground), dives into the sexual misconduct allegations against music mogul Russell Simmons, the so-called ‘Godfather of Hip Hop.’ It centres on interviews with Drew Dixon (pictured below), who — as a twentysomething music executive — launched Whitney Houston hits and scouted a young Kanye West. She left the industry after Simmons allegedly raped her.This is an elegant, stinging addition to the #MeToo dialogue, which gives due emphasis to black women and the music industry — a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There’s a moment halfway through Khruangbin’s latest album that succinctly sums up the melting-pot model this band have made their own. It’s “Pelota”, a Spanish-influenced song, based on a Japanese film, played by a Texan three-piece with a Thai name. It’s also very, very good indeed.If Khruangbin is a name new to you, then you’ll need to know that, on their previous three albums (including Hasta el Cielo, 2019’s dub reworking of their second, Con Todo El Mundo), they have dabbled in dub reggae, Middle Eastern psychedelia, 1960s Thai music, funk and soul. For a band who seem to be happy Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Personal grace and crafted precision underpin John Legend’s neo-soul style, leaving pushing boundaries to others, to stake out the romantic ground we still share. Like Smokey Robinson, he has tireless interest and infinite metaphors for love. “Wild” sees him buy a new car just to drop the top to see the stars, while “Slow Cooker” teases out a simmer’s erotic possibilities, as he lets his groan languidly stretch, rolling words around till his creamy falsetto crests, its vocal takeoff typically effortless. Most Smokey-like in artistic mentality is “Actions”, where the very act of writing love Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Moses Sumney’s second album is a double, and splits and nuances in gender, sexuality and identity define its fluid nature. A 28-year-old Ghanaian-American who grew up as an outsider in both countries, Sumney is most interested in removing masculinity’s hard shell, and touching the tenderness beneath.The sensitively quavering male voice has become a grating indie cliché, but Sumney’s potently polymorphous falsetto is something else. This is soul holding forth in the confession booth, and indie rock locked in a brimming bedroom. Sometimes it’s beatlessly unemphatic, bonelessly liquid R&B. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
He's only in his mid-20s, but this is Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado’s 15th album. Veering away from a predictable path, his career is dotted with sonic experimentalism alongside a tendency to try abstract lyrical forms. He also appears on one of the most beautiful songs of this century, Moby’s haunted chorale, “Almost Home”. This time round, however, having disposed, the PR sheet tells us, of most of his possessions, like a zen sage, he gives us a relatively straightforward set.Jurado’s voice is a fragile instrument. He can do that whole vulnerable falsetto thing, but he prefers to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How Mitch Ryder is seen depends on particular perspectives. The Detroit blue-eyed soul belter racked up a string of US hits on 45 in 1966 and 1967. He made many albums, became an oldies radio staple and a perennial live draw. In the UK though he was small beer and his only sniff at the charts was with “Jenny Take A Ride”, which brushed the outside edge of the Top 30 in early 1966.However, one section of Britain’s music-loving public was keenly attuned to his take on soul. Ryder’s May 1966 single “Break Out” was initially played in the late Sixties at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel, and then Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Colors studio in Berlin has quietly created one of the biggest new brands in music from filming back-to-basics performances with laser-focused branding. From international megastars (Billie Eilish, Mac DeMarco) to up-and-comers, singers and occasionally rappers are filmed alone in a simple cube-shaped stage with distinctive colour-cycling lighting. In one sense, it's an incredibly slick marketing operation: for all the international diversity of the performer, they're photogenic one and all, and the consistency of the visuals gives an eerie, slightly cult-like air to things.But at the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Filmic. Lushness balanced with intimacy. Ren Harvieu’s follow-up to 2012’s Top Five Through The Night is crammed with wide-screen aural dramas. Take “Cruel Disguise”. It begins with a slinky Sixties spy thriller vibe along the Shirley Bassey lines and after a brief moment of contemplation evolves into a swirling drama evoking Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have to Say You Love me”. Next up, the crisp “Yes Please” nods to Laura Nyro when she’d hooked up with LaBelle but, again, darker – trip-hop-tinged – terrain is explored.The singing voice is melodic, yearning and nuanced. Yet Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Buried lyrical tremors barely disturb Little Dragon’s blissed electronic R&B, on the former Gothenburg schoolmates’ fifth album. Though forming in 1996, they took another decade to really begin a career which has included collaborations with Gorillaz, DJ Shadow and Outkast’s Big Boi, and co-headlining the Hollywood Bowl with Flying Lotus. The conscious hip-hop and spiritual jazz influences which saw them jam on A Tribe Called Quest and Alice Coltrane tunes as teenagers have now filtered down into modern quiet storm soul, with female vocalist Yukimi Nagano suggesting the androgynous Read more ...