“There’s a rhythm in the air around Memphis, there always has been,” Carl Perkins once said.
It can be hard to put distance between an artist and their behaviour. Woody Allen films present a problem for some, while I, for one, will never see Tommy Robinson’s impressionist landscapes in the same light again.
Watching this band in action is a treat. They gel absolutely and play off one another in a manner that’s easy and mellow, yet also sparks by occasionally teetering on the edge of their virtuosic abilities. The songs played throughout the evening at Brighton Festival are protest classics and other socially aware fare, but the group’s leader-arrangers, singer Carleen Anderson and keyboard player Nikki Yeoh, have turned them, via jazz, into almost completely new pieces of music.
Hosted by Jazz FM presenters Chris Philips and Jez Nelson on UNESCO’s International Jazz Day, rising stars and international icons were honoured at the fifth Jazz FM Awards on Monday night.
The opening couplet on Plan B’s new album runs thus: “What the hell have I got to be grateful for?/Can’t be the money as I wasn’t trying to make no more.” One appealing aspect of singer-actor-MC Ben Drew is that he’s spiky, emanating a certain rage. It’s good to see that, after six years away, it’s still there. However, Heaven Before All Hell Breaks Loose, is no Ill Manors, Drew’s 2012 film/album polemic about underclass Britain; instead, steeped in old soul and imaginative production, this is a rip-roaring 21st century pop album, and a very good one.
Where Plan B’s last album in this vein, The Defamation of Strickland Banks, was a concept piece, with a discernible narrative, Heaven… is simply a tight collection of songs. Delivered with aplomb, Drew’s vocals are rich and impressive, somewhere between Otis Redding and Seal, often laid over Memphis-style rhythm & blues boosted on hip hop beats and surrounded by electronic trimmings. The album, written with various contemporary songwriters such as Foy Vance and Kid Harpoon, initially sticks to this formula, which, after all, made him a star, but then he becomes playful, giving us a couple of housey numbers, the steel-band-flavoured “Wait So Long” and Disclosure-ish “Pushin’”. From there he spreads his wings.
Thematically, the lyrics mostly deal with affairs of the heart and his personal belief (eg “Heartbeat” - “I did it just to prove ‘em wrong/Because they said I’d never make anything of myself”) but he still has time for bursts of anti-authoritarian vim, as on the energized, dubsteppy “Guess Again”. Wherever he heads, musically, he appears unstoppable. The astounding “Flesh & Bone” could come from Beyoncé’s superb Lemonade; the title track has a crackling funk; the rave-gospel of “Mercy” bursts with life and ideas. And there’s much more to revel in besides.
Plan B has returned with all flags flying. Whether the general public, whose memory is notoriously short, are ready to welcome him as he deserves, remains to be seen, but his fourth album is a gem, easy to listen to yet full of vibrancy and variety.
Overleaf: Watch the video for "Stranger" by Plan B
It is, perhaps, a tale that suffers from overfamiliarity. Tina Turner’s rags-to-riches story – from humble beginnings as little Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her discovery, reinvention and sickening abuse by husband and manager Ike Turner, and finally her rebirth as a solo rock'n'roll star – is the stuff of showbiz legend.
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.
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.
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.
“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.