soul music
Russ Coffey
Joan Wasser – aka Joan as Police Woman – is known as a sophisticated songwriter and a pretty groovy person. But most of all it’s her gorgeously warm voice that's earned her a cult following. Over seven albums her angst-ridden vocals have explored heartache and compulsion with a blend of soul and indie-rock. Damned Devotion, her latest LP, has been particularly well received, earning mainly four-star reviews. Her UK tour starts next week in Glasgow.Wasser was not always a singer. She started off her musical career playing violin in various youth orchestras, and later with the Boston University Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It was 2011 when Gregory Porter made his first London appearances at Pizza Express in Dean Street. That club has a capacity just over 100, and yet it only seems like yesterday. Last night that same honeyed voice was filling the cavernous 5,272-seater Royal Albert Hall, on the first of 14 UK dates in big halls, with repertoire mostly associated with Nat King Cole, backed by his regular quartet, but also by the 70-piece London Studio Orchestra playing opulent arrangements by Vince Mendoza.Back in 2011, the buzz about the uniqueness of Porter’s voice was only just starting. The canny director of Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (respectively an Assistant Editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer) in New York; the middle section comprises a series of reflections narrated by Amar, an American-Iraqi while he is held in detention at Heathrow en route to see his brother in Iraqi Kurdistan. The final third consists of a transcript of Ezra’s Desert Island Discs recorded some years later.The book focusses on how power imbalances inflect relationships. This is quite clear when Alice’s giddy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“That colourful character Zoot Money has recently been writing at length in support of psychedelic music. Now, what’s the score Zoot, has it got a contribution to make to the scene?” It’s 14 January 1967 and BBC presenter Brian Matthew is putting his guest on the spot.“I think so,” responds Money. “It’s an art form. Everything has to be broken open and seen in as many different ways as possible. I suppose that’s why we’re here, to break it open and find out what’s inside, that it was there all the time.”Six months later, Money announced the break-up of his group the Big Roll Band and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For Britain, 1965 began with The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” at the top of the single’s chart. In December, the year bowed out with their double A-side “Day Tripper” / “We can Work it Out” in the same position. But 1965 was not just about The Beatles.According to the writer Jon Savage, “1965 was the year of Dylan, folk-rock and protest, and the year when the post-beat bohemian subculture took over from traditional showbiz as the principal youth culture. Suits and group uniforms were out: denim, suede and long hair in. It was also a vintage Motown year. It wasn’t like an Austin Powers film, with a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I’ve been labelled as an angry young man / Because I don’t fit into the master plan / Under society’s microscope / I look funny but it’s no joke.I’m a social end product so don’t blame me / I’m a social end product of society / It’s not my fault that I don’t belong / It’s the world around me that’s gone all wrong.”Delivered with snot-nosed venom, the lyrics of The Bluestars’ December 1966 single “Social End Product” rail against the perceptions fostering the them-and-us generation gap. The music is suitably tough, defined by an insistent fuzz guitar riff and pounding drums. Wherever it’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities Volume 6 suggests this 24-track compilation might be a rag-bag; a collection of random musical floor-sweepings which couldn’t be collected under any other heading. Not a bit of it. Instead, every contribution is a gem. Anyone into soul – Northern, or any of its forms – will get a buzz from this collection.“High-quality dance records from across the Northern Soul spectrum – floor-fillers, chin-strokers, the esoteric and the sometimes obvious” are the words summing up the contents on the back of the package. This nails it though it’s hard to see how Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
French stylist Gaspard Royant has recorded at London’s garage-rock-central studio Toe Rag and been produced by Edwyn Collins. Both fit a worldview which encompasses collaborating with Eli Paperboy Reed, who crops up here on “Christmas Time Again”, a cover of Reuben Anderson’s wonderful, soulful 1966 ska single. Drawing a line between garage rock, Sixties urban R&B and soul with dashes of blues and nods to Lee Hazlewood, Royant is a Gallic cousin to Richard Hawley. Unsurprisingly, his first Christmas album is a knowing affair.Scooping up tracks from Royant’s seasonal singles and marrying Read more ...
theartsdesk
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017Alan Broadbent: Developing Story ★★★★★ The pianist's orchestral magnum opus is packed with extraordinary thingsArcade Fire: Everything Now ★★★★★ A joyous pop album that depicts a world in tragic freefallAutarkic: I Love You, Go Away ★★★★★ Tel Aviv producer Nadav Spiegel's latest collection is a triumph of head and heartBrian Eno: Reflection ★★★★★ Slow-motion cascades Read more ...
Mark Kidel
A strange and wonderful moment: the standing area at the rear of The Lantern, the smaller venue at Bristol’s Colston Hall, is suddenly transformed into a corner of Southern Albania.A band plays haunting music, rooted in the firm yet delicate beat of a frame drum, a clarinet swirling above the drone provided by violin and lutes. A stately circle moves around the musicians, with all the grace that would be displayed at a mountain wedding in Northern Epirus. There are smiles and laughter, cries of “Hopa!", and rhythmic clapping, a far cry from the grim autumn night that lies beyond the hall.This Read more ...
peter.quinn
This fourth studio album from pianist, vocalist, songwriter and producer Oli Rockberger highlights his remarkable knack of marrying instantly memorable chorus hooks with captivating harmonies steeped in jazz, soul, gospel and R&B.Consisting of 10 beautifully crafted explorations of love, desire and loss, Sovereign was conceived and recorded in New York with the trusted rhythm section of bassist Jordan Scannella and drummer Jordan Perlson, just as Rockberger was on the cusp of returning to his London birthplace following 16 years in the US – a journey which began with study at Boston’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
In a sense, the air of tedium that surrounds Sam Smith is a wonderful thing. This is a person who can talk about having fluid gender identity and make it sound as if he's simply unsure whether he prefers boiled or mashed potatoes: that is, he's somehow able to dip into one of the spiciest political topics of the age without scaring your gran. It doesn't, though, make him a great pop star.One imagines he'd like to be seen alongside the modern indie/soul likes of Sampha – both came through featuring on early 2010s bass/dance tracks, then emerged as obliquely emoting frontmen. But there's Read more ...