soul music
Kieron Tyler
A two-bar flurry of guitar lays the table for a skip-along beat, handclaps, and an arrangement and melody akin to Martha and the Vandellas’ March 1964 single “In my Lonely Room”. This though was not a Motown production and did not tell the story of a girl so distraught at her boyfriend’s dalliances that all she could do was take to her lonely room and cry. On “The 81”, Candy & the Kisses sang of a dance craze for anyone “tired of doing the monkey, tired of doing the swing.”Despite being a knock-off of the Detroit sound, the irresistible “The 81” did not sound like a Motown record. It Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Sixty-five thousand people came to Wonder. The final night of British Summer Time in Hyde Park was a sell-out. With a performance lasting four hours including an intermission, the Detroit-born legend and his band – and also the weather, which stayed fine all evening - can have left nobody disappointed. The show, based on the album Songs in the Key of Life, with some extra off-piste excursions, was thoroughly convincing live. It just works very well, and on several levels. First there's the sheer quality and compositional versatility of the original album. The appeal of just about all of Read more ...
Andrew Cartmel
The year 1987 was a notable one in music history. In February, Burt Bacharach won the Grammy for best song with “That’s What Friends Are For”, and two months later Joss Stone was born in England. At the age of 17 Stone would be nominated for three Grammies of her own, and at 19 would become a winner. She remains a platinum-selling singer and songwriter at the top of her game.But it’s Bacharach who has made the most astonishing mark as a writer and recording artist. One could cite his nine number ones and 66 top-40 hits, three Oscars and eight Grammies, but bare facts and figures can’t begin Read more ...
joe.muggs
If last night made anything clear it's that some things are still some way beyond the reach of hipster reappropriation. The audience in Hyde Park for Carole King was 99% white and middle-aged, with the very few younger people scattered about appearing to be teenagers there with their parents. Within that, though, there was a broad spread of class, and – reflecting the appeal of King's Tapestry album at the time of its release – everyone from grizzled old hippies to a whole legion of straight-as-a-die mums and dads of the kind who have probably only bought half a dozen other albums since the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It begins with “Never Never Let Me Down” by Formulars Dance Band. “You’re the only good thing I’ve got,” declares the singer of a garage-band answer to The Impressions over a rough-and-ready backing where a shuffling mid-tempo groove is driven along by wheezy organ and scratchy lead guitar. When the band unites to sing harmonies, the massed vocal is distorted: a sure sign of an overloaded microphone. If this were America, “Never Never Let Me Down” would have been an obscure independent soul release issued around 1966. But this was Nigeria and Formulars Dance Band – whose personnel are unknown Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s a foolish game to wonder who might fill the musical void left by Amy Winehouse’s passing. She was a one-off, after all. However, it’s natural to occasionally look about and ponder where there might be talent of a similar ilk. Not all the doomed druggy stuff, just a female singer who does it from the gut rather than X Factor-flavoured fluffing. Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Zara Larsson et al seem unlikely to even get their round in; of Winehouse’s immediate peers, Duffy’s disappeared and Adele’s become a theatrical torch singer (albeit a very likeable one), and all those Kate Bushy kooks, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The first reaction to Introducing Karl Blau is to wonder whether it’s an overlooked album from the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. It opens with a creamy smooth voice that’s close to cracking with emotion. The song being sung is a version of country singer-songwriter Tom T Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis” which sounds as though it was recorded at Alabama’s FAME studios at least 45 years ago. With gently funky guitar, shuffling drums and a slightly deeper vocal register, the next track, “Six White Horses”, bears the influence of Tony Joe White.As the album progresses it becomes clear that each Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Corinne Bailey Rae’s heart may speak in whispers, but it dreams in glorious technicolour. The title of the Leeds-born songwriter’s new album is an echoey chorus line that swims among the layers of its opening track – a song with the bridge of a boiling ocean that hints at dance-pop beats, reinvention. “The Skies Will Break” was surely an album title contender in its own right, perhaps not so much for its dubious poetry as for the glorious moment of catharsis it signals – a head rush, and then a moment of serenity.Fans concerned, from that giddy opener, that new love and a six-year hiatus have Read more ...
joe.muggs
Canadian singer/producer Jessy Lanza's records – and this one more than ever – can feel like they're mapping an alternative history, one where populist and leftfield electronic music were never separate. Two aspects dominate her sound: her crisp, clear pop vocal, and a palpable love of the sonorities of drum machines. Through every song you can hear echoing a history of electro, from its roots in Suicide, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, on the one hand through eighties pop, new wave, Madonna, Prince and Timbaland, and on the other through the underground Detroit techno Read more ...
peter.quinn
A diverse mix of musicians from the worlds of jazz, blues, soul and beyond were honoured at the third Jazz FM Awards on Tuesday night, which took place in the 1920s art-deco setting of London’s Bloomsbury Ballroom.Hosted by writer, actor and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli, and produced by Serious, the ceremony featured performances from Kansas Smitty’s House Band, Liv Warfield, rising star singer/pianist Kandace Springs, and Hiatus Kaiyote. Guest presenters included Cerys Matthews, Nitin Sawhney, Soweto Kinch, plus Simon Bartholomew and Andrew Levy from the Brand New Heavies. Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Three years ago Laura Mvula captured both hearts and minds with her intriguing and seductive debut album, Sing to the Moon. Last night she began again the nerve-wracking process of revealing new music, in this case her second album, The Dreaming Room, to be released in the summer.Though critics loved Sing to the Moon, it was hindered commercially by its subtlety and tendency to duck the big glitzy climax in favour of a left-field closure. With the arrival of drummer and producer Troy Miller, now Mvula’s musical director, to work on this album, there was a chance this collection would be more Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
January 1966 is a half a century back but some of the music released 50 years ago this month remains fresh, vital and timeless. With its biting invective and energy, Bob Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl out of Your Window” will never lose its visceral edge. Dusty Springfield’s joyful, kinetic “Little by Little” is eternally alive. Author Jon Savage goes further and pinpoints the whole of 1966 as “the year that shaped the rest of the century”. His proposition uses the year’s pop music as evidence for 1966 as a year like no other: one which was pivotal and irrevocably changed the world.Savage Read more ...