soul music
Tim Cumming
It begins with a superb rendering of his 2018 song “Ain’t Gonna Moan No More”, on which Van is joined by the mellifluous voice of Kurt Elling, and which was recorded alongside the other duets on the album in 2018 and 2019.It then winds through a mix of duets recorded in 2014 (alas, no Sir Cliff) and what they're calling "big band" arrangements of catalogue classics like “Avalon of the Heart”, “So Quiet in Here” and “The Master’s Eyes”, a gem from 1985’s A Sense of Wonder. This extremely likeable scoop of slightly random songs is the second of a series of releases from the vaults on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As the name of a music genre, new jack swing was coined in an issue of the Village Voice dated 18 October 1987. Writer Barry Michael Cooper was profiling producer, songwriter and member of the R&B trio Guy, Teddy Riley when he created a tag exemplifying the mix of R&B and hip-hop which had hit super-big in 1986 with Janet Jackson’s Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced Control. Riley was on the same wavelength, and Cooper recognised a groundswell.Swingbeat was interchangeable with new jack swing, but it was the latter which caught on. So When TLC and SWV emerged in 1992 they were swiftly Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Allergies kicked off their Freak the Speaker tour in Birmingham this week. However, the album that they were promoting was nowhere to be seen on their merch stand – “Brexit issues” apparently. This didn’t dim the band’s enthusiasm one bit though and they had the congregated soulboys and soulgirls of all ages – from teenagers to retirees – bouncing around like maniacs to good grooves aplenty at the Hare and Hounds.The Hare and Hounds is not a large venue and access to the stage is from the crowd, which means that grand entrances aren’t really part of the vibe. So, once warm up DJ Sam Read more ...
joe.muggs
Trip hop is everywhere these days. From Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey on down, some of the biggest artists in the world channel a smoky, bluesy, late 90s mood – and in the UK something even more interesting is happening that taps into a longer, deeper continuum.In the burgeoning soul/jazz underground (and mainstream!) the likes of Jorja Smith, Dave Okumu, Yazmin Lacey are all tapping into a wellspring of uniquely British introspective groove that runs not just through Massive Attack and Nightmares On Wax but back through Sade, Soul II Soul to the years of lovers rock and Cymande.Squarely in Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Those with long memories will remember Sean Dickson (as Hi FI Sean is known to his Mum) as the vocalist and driving force of 80s indie guitar types the Soup Dragons, and David McAlmont from his Brit Pop era hit with Bernard Buttler, “Yes”. That all happened a long time ago but, unlike many of their contemporaries, neither of these two can be accused of being stuck in a creative rut since their glory days.Daylight is actually the duo’s second album and it couldn’t feel more different to the sounds that first brought them to public prominence. In fact, 90s house music, synth pop, gospel and Read more ...
joe.muggs
Two of the biggest trends in 21st century pop culture today have been “poptimism” – broadly, the idea that pop as such is as serious and worthy of analysis as any other artform – and a kind of everything-everywhere-all-at-once telescoping of past influences into a grab bag of total availability. The former tendency has rather clotted into received wisdom (fuelled by click addiction) that bigger is better and Taylor Swift therefore deserves more critical attention than anyone else. The latter – though it has led to plenty of interesting lanes of subcultural scholarship – is often derided for Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Michael Thevis made his money from pornography. In the Seventies, his Atlanta warehouses were stuffed with most of America’s porn. Nationally, Thevis was the main distributor. Looking for something less edgy to fund with his profits, he turned to the music business and bankrolled the GRC label and its sister imprints Aware and Hotlanta. In time, they became three of America's most lauded soul labels. In parallel, Thevis sealed his reputation as a notorious criminal.Over 1973 to 1975, GRC issued just-over 100 singles – the total seems to be 104. Around 12 albums also appeared in Read more ...
joe.muggs
The noise in the international mainstream in recent years might be about dance-pop, hip hop beefs and the serious balladry of Taylor, Billie and Lana – yet at the same time, R&B has been strange, brilliant, ultra-popular, but generated a tiny fraction of the column inches and “discourse”.Jhene Aiko, Tinashe, SZA, H.E.R., Mahalia: these are radical artists, each making fascinating music that generates billions of streams, yet certainly in the UK they’re generating micro-fractions of the column inches that their contemporaries in other genres are. The reaction to SZA’s Glastonbury Read more ...
joe.muggs
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm, that’s pretty nice”, now it was more “mmmmmmm, that’s pretty niiiiiice!” That’s not just a suble distinction, either. It was a fundamental shift in how and where the music was hitting mentally, emotionally and physiologically. It went from being a slickly pleasant mood enhancer to something that made my shoulders drop, my chest expand, my limbs loosen, my attention let go of distractions zoom in on what was happenning in the moment. Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is a reviewer’s nightmare: it’s literally just Khruangbin doing what Khruangbin do. As ever, the Texan trio are rolling out laid-back psychedelic spaghetti western Tex-Mex country-soul-funk groove after laid-back psychedelic spaghetti western Tex-Mex country-soul-funk groove, all drenched in the usual hazy reverb that practically demand you start drawing for adjectives like “sun-bleached” and talk about big skies and desert landscapes. The instrumentation is, as ever, all super-trad too. Bass, drums, guitar and just tiny wisps of Hammond organ and vocal are recorded in lovingly analogue Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dee C Lee was born Diane Sealy in London in 1961. She is best known for her 1985 hit “See the Day”, later covered by Girls Aloud, and for being in two of the Eighties' most notable pop acts, The Style Council and WHAM!. But she was also prolifically involved in multiple other musical projects, and now has a new album appearing, Just Something, her first in over 25 years.Lee’s first break came through talking her way into working with the British soul outfit Central Line, who had a couple of US club hits in 1981. From here, EMI picked her up as a session singer and, alongside Shirlie Holliman Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A few records changed music. One such was “The Love I Lost (Part 1)” by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes. Issued as a single by the Philadelphia International label in August 1973, its release introduced what would become a major characteristic of disco music. This was the first time a particular groove was heard; the percussive use of the drum kit’s cymbals with an emphasis on the hi-hat.The inventor of this soon-to-be ubiquitous signifier was Earl Young, a studio-based drummer who since around Autumn 1971 was regularly booked by Philadelphia International producers and songwriters Kenny Read more ...