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JESSIE WARE: That! Feels Good! (EMI)
Verdict: Sparkling dance gems
The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein (4AD)
Verdict: Vivid and literate
FREYA RIDINGS: Blood Orange (Good Soldier)
Verdict: Bittersweet pop
Riccardo Chailly: Verdi Choruses (Decca 485 3950)
VERDICT: Opera Choruses
The transformation of Jessie Ware into a disco diva gathers pace on the London singer’s fifth album.
Once celebrated as the doyenne of sultry, down-tempo electronica, she threw herself into dance music — albeit the ‘dancing round your kitchen’ in lockdown variety — on 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure, and is now refusing to look back.
Getting to this position hasn’t been easy. Jessie, 38, initially failed to live up to the promise of her elegant, Mercury Prize-nominated debut, Devotion, and hit a low point in 2018 when she played a disastrous set, riddled with sound problems, at the Coachella festival in California. Her confidence dented, she was left facing an uncertain future.
Salvation came not in the studio but in the kitchen, where she had just launched the award-winning lifestyle podcast Table Manners with her mum Lennie.
The enterprise, in which Jessie and Lennie interview famous people over a home-cooked meal, bought Ware valuable breathing space, allowing her to re-evaluate her career.
The upshot was What’s Your Pleasure… and now That! Feels Good!, which refines the approach of its predecessor, her best-selling album, by bringing a sharper focus to those glitterball beats.
The transformation of Jessie Ware (pictured) into a disco diva gathers pace on the London singer’s fifth album
The upshot was What’s Your Pleasure… and now That! Feels Good!, which refines the approach of its predecessor, her best-selling album, by bringing a sharper focus to those glitterball beats.
And just as Coachella saw her at rock bottom, her zestful live shows since the pandemic, particularly on a U.S. tour with Harry Styles, have strengthened her self-belief.
That! Feels Good! is unashamedly retro. British clubland luminaries James Ford and Stuart Price — aided by Ware’s long-term collaborator (and now drummer) Dave Okumu — frame her exuberant vocals with arrangements that nod to 1970s disco, 1980s funk and 1990s French house.
The spirit of fabled New York nightspot Studio 54 looms large on an album that would make a great party playlist.
Some disco music can be cool and robotic; but Jessie’s take on a genre in the midst of a revival is warm, engaging and bursting with personality.
On Pearls, she looks to classics such as Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman and Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King’s Love Come Down as she sings of her desire to balance domestic bliss (she’s a mother of three now) with her need to let go: ‘I’m a lady, I’m a lover, a freak and a mother… it’s my human nature, I crave a little danger.’
On Hello Love, her soulful voice is multi-tracked to impressive effect, while the seductive Latin grooves of Begin Again take their cue from time spent enjoying ‘the heat, sweat and sensuality’ of Brazil.
The energy levels drop just once: Lightning harks back to the softer, Sade-like moods of old, though the tempo is still brisk. That! Feels Good! isn’t an album of huge emotional depth.
Public perception of The National has also shifted in the four years since the band’s previous album, I Am Easy To Find.
Once viewed as America’s answer to Radiohead, thanks to world-weary songs that even singer Matt Berninger jokingly admitted were depressing, they are now seen in a fresh light due to guitarist and pianist Aaron Dessner’s extra-curricular activities.
Dessner was the main producer and co-writer on Taylor Swift’s two lockdown albums, Folklore and Evermore.
He has also produced Ed Sheeran’s imminent fifth album, Subtract, and says that working with the two pop Titans has brought greater urgency to his day job.
Despite the change in Dessner’s profile, though, new album First Two Pages Of Frankenstein doesn’t move the dial too much for The National, who formed in New York after moving from Cincinnati in 1999.
The quintet’s ninth album is rich in lyrical colour and beautiful arrangements, its fragile, piano-dominated ballads punctuated by electronics and the occasional rock number.
Despite the change in Dessner’s profile, though, new album First Two Pages Of Frankenstein doesn’t move the dial too much for The National, who formed in New York after moving from Cincinnati in 1999.
Berninger struggled through a year-long bout of writer’s block before coming up with these lyrics.
He finally found a breakthrough after flicking through Mary Shelley’s gothic novel — hence the album title — and his narratives are vivid and literate, using everyday details as what Berninger calls ‘little lily pads’.
Dessner (pictured) was the main producer and co-writer on Taylor Swift’s two lockdown albums, Folklore and Evermore
Two contrasting sides of a relationship are explored on New Order T-Shirt and Eucalyptus.
The first track looks back, with Berninger reminiscing about new love (‘you in my New Order T-shirt, holding a cat and a glass of beer’).
The second chronicles the woes of a former couple dividing up the minutiae of their broken lives, from treasured LPs to a subscription for mineral water.
Elsewhere, Tropic Morning News is about an addiction to gloomy news bulletins, while Send For Me is one of several sweet love ballads.
Sung in Berninger’s trademark baritone croon, it’s all wonderfully observed, even if there are few big hooks.
With a UK tour in the autumn, though, these songs will surely come into their own onstage.
Next weekend’s Coronation Concert provides a perfect platform for Freya Ridings to reintroduce her soul-baring songs to the public.
In 2018, with Lost Without You, the 29-year-old Londoner became the first female artist to chalk up an entirely self-written Top Ten single since Kate Bush’s original release of Running Up That Hill in 1985.
The Windsor Castle spectacular — where she is performing with pianist Alexis Ffrench — will see her on the same bill as Take That and Katy Perry, in front of 20,000 fans plus millions of viewers on BBC1.
Before that, there’s today’s release of the former Brit School student’s second album: an autobiographical affair that chronicles her romantic ups and downs.
Blood Orange starts as a bitter fruit, with Ridings using recent single Weekends to bemoan the fact that she’s at home alone on a Friday night. She then finds herself hankering for an old flame on Face In The Crowd.
Next weekend’s Coronation Concert provides a perfect platform for Freya Ridings (pictured) to reintroduce her soul-baring songs to the public
By the time we get to Can I Jump? and the euphoric I Feel Love (sadly not the Donna Summer classic), life is tasting sweeter.
‘Wanna take a leap of faith for us?’ she asks on the former.
Blood Orange’s mix of forlorn piano ballads and big production numbers is sometimes too generic.
The title track is standard pop fare. The catchy Bite Me looks to the new-wave synth sounds of Harry Styles’s As It Was.
But Ridings’s rich, versatile voice gives these songs their distinctive character. Her spot at the Coronation Concert should be worth watching.
Freya Ridings plays festival shows this summer, and starts a UK tour on September 17 at Ulster Hall, Belfast (ticketmaster.co.uk).
Jessie Ware starts a tour on November 10 at the Victoria Warehouse, Manchester. Tickets go on sale at 10am today (gigsandtours.com).
The National start their tour at the First Direct Arena, Leeds, on September 23 (livenation.co.uk).
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