R&b With Sweat And Grit, Shame About The Venue

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday February 6, 2006

Bernard Zuel; Peter McCallum

MUSIC

Jade MacRae

Basement, February 3

Reviewed by Bernard Zuel

RENEE GEYER, our finest soul and R&B singer, was standing up at the back of the room, having arrived from her own gig elsewhere in Sydney in time to see this night's second set.

Looking on with an experienced and by no means uncritical eye as her former backing singer played to an overstuffed room which had sold out long before the show began, Geyer nodded towards the stage and said that no matter whether you thought Jade MacRae good, great or otherwise "at least she's playing R&B".

As usual with the frank-talking Geyer, she cut to the point. For most of the past 10 to 15 years, the charts and radio around the world have been dominated by commercial hip-hop and pop-R&B, the sweetened version of a naturally gritty style whose sweetness is best exemplified by the pretty faces, pretty tunes and pretty voices of Usher or Destiny's Child.

While both modern styles referred to and sampled from the sounds and moves of funk, soul and soul's earthier twin, the danceable, church-music-gone-to-sweaty-hell R&B, producers and sales-conscious record companies preferred to keep those "old" things at some remove. Spray-on sweat is much easier to control than the real stuff after all.

In Australia we rarely could even manage the fake stuff: too stiff or too referential rather than innate. What MacRae managed on her self-titled debut album last year was to sound both eminently commercial (here were hooks any radio station could rely on to keep a listener stationary until the next ad break) and connected to the source (she sounded as if she may have heard an original '50s, '60s or '70s record rather than a third generation '90s appropriation).

Live, this becomes even more obvious. Some mighty basslines, smartly played choppy guitar and a rhythm section wanting to swing rather than stamp had the grace note of (rarely seen today) well mixed backing vocals. Apart from a clumsy piano solo, the band impressed because the emphasis was on building a whole sound rather than showboating or filling the spaces until the easily accessible hook arrived.

All this meant that MacRae could concentrate on delivery and didn't need to blow us away. Which is handy as the voice is fine but not powerful or expansive so that she holds your attention easily but doesn't yet command the stage.

It's a pity, though, that whoever booked this gig chose a venue where half the audience was sitting in front of the stage and the other half were squashed shoulder to shoulder and unable to move (or in some cases even see). Maybe they'll figure out soon that MacRae is someone you want to dance to, not just nod your head to in appreciation.

MUSIC

Andreas Scholl

Musica Viva, City Recital Hall

February 4

Repeated February 13

Reviewed by Peter McCallum

"THAT strain again! it had a dying fall ...

Enough, no more:

'Tis not so sweet now as it was before."

Had the dying fall been a lute song by Shakespeare's contemporary, John Dowland, and sung by Andreas Scholl, Orsino would not have been so dismissive and Twelfth Night might have progressed differently. Shakespeare and Dowland saw the connection between the lovelorn and the last line, but it is Scholl who has perfected the manner of allowing the life force of the melody to ease away like a white feather landing on a grave without sacrificing his glorious ivory tone.

Except for a couple of saucy songs by Thomas Campion, Scholl was miserable for the whole night, from the dolorous Dowland's "All ye, whom Love or Fortune hath betray'd" to the moment at the end when Lord Rendall's dastardly sweetheart gives him "spickit and sparkit" eel broth with woeful effects on the digestion. Of the Elizabethan lute songs in the first half, sung with lutenist Crawford Young, Dowland's In darkness let me dwell received the most overtly emotional treatment with Scholl nurtured the opening line in distracted quietness, allowing it to swell for small moments, and rise to convulsiveness in the second section before breaking off dramatically as though rent asunder. Such wide rhythmic freedom in other hands would risk being overdone, but Scholl's sound is so perfect, his intent so carefully sculpted and his artistic purpose so manifestly sincere that the song becomes a miniature tragedy.

In the suggestive words of the Campion songs he is charming without being over coy. Young accompanied with delicacy, skilfully improvising a connection between a solo lute fantasia by Gregory Huwett into the next song, and maintaining apt emphasis even on his most quiet instrument.

Improvisatory skills came more to the fore in the second half, comprised of folk songs arranged by Young for voice and guitar. As Scholl remarked, these are simple works with a melody and a story to tell, and Scholl's voice has such captivating beauty that one almost forgets his skills in narration. In the first half the diction had not always been clear, but here the unrequited love of the Wayfaring Stranger, Pretty Saro and the rest was so graphically illustrated and so universal that it was astonishing the species survived at all.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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