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15
NEWS
MUSIC
sn't this a lovely day to be
caught in the rain?" Sigh.
A woman's life sure was
peachy back in
Ella Fitzgerald
's
day. The blueness of the sky, the
fogginess of London, the April-ness
of Paris, the starriness of Alabama,
the moonlight over Vermont, the
"Nearness" of the fella who takes
her out dancing, cheek to cheek…
Heaven. She's in heaven.
Sampling the Female Vocal
section of a well-stocked record
store, a visitor from another planet
might be persuaded that 1956 was
a golden age for the female of the
species. This one with the gentle
smile and slow, heart-melting throb
in her voice must have been some
kind of queen.
This
Louis Armstrong
bloke
sounds like a right gent, forever
deferring as a duet partner and
brandishing that golden horn like
a magnificent bouquet. And if
there's a more romantic posse of
chaperones than Oscar Petersen,
Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Buddy
Rich, well, you won't find them
outside the jazz section.
Another genre, another decade,
another goddess in the Classics bin,
but times seem tougher for
Dusty
Springfield
circa '69. Maybe it's
just that she
wants
more from her
menfolk: just a little lovin', early in
the mornin' – followed by breakfast
in bed, no less. There's a yearning
in her voice, a dawning awareness
that the script she's been handed
can sell her short (sons of preacher
men notably excepted).
The liner notes tell us she's
made it here to Memphis alone, the
rose of British pop trying on an R&B
groove with lazy soul horns and a
smokin' harmony section called the
Sweet Inspirations. It’s almost like
this dame doesn't know her place
– or just doesn't care to stay in it.
It's enough to give the ladies uppity
ideas for generations to come.
Flip forward a few decades
and Ella's sultry jazz and Dusty's
blue-eyed soul have morphed into
something unspeakably bleak by
'94.
Portishead
's Beth Gibbons is
wailing a modern world of anxiety
from the soundstage of some
dystopian arthouse movie, a woman
in a cage of confused expectations.
Who are these
Mysterons
that
haunt her as the theremin raises
the stuttering curtain?
Sour Times
?
Strangers
?
Numb
? Er,
Biscuit
?
"Give me a reason to love you," she
same way Dusty Springfield ate
breakfast.
A dead set R&B classic in 2007,
Back To Black
seems less an album
out of time as an affirmation that life
is forever a losing game to some.
Tears dry on their
own, folks wake up
alone – and nothing
rhymes quite so well
with
Addicted
. There
are no further records
by Amy Winehouse
in the racks. As
if this one, from
scalding lyric sheet to
heartbreaking photo
album, wasn't already
a keeper.
Time speeds up.
Flip just six years
ahead and there's a
heckuva lot of black
on the cover of
Pure
Heroine
: smooth
gatefold panels and
implacable grey
words on page after
page of deepest
night sky. It's like
everything that's
come before has
saturated the canvas.
There's just room for
a stylised medallion
representing the
new pop goddess, a
timeless emblem of
every woman who
wants it.
Lorde
's music
has the slow drag
of soul in it, and
the muted electro
undertow of trip-hop,
but she's singularly
unimpressed with the
world as she's found it and quietly
cocksure about moulding it to her
own image. "It's a new artform,
showing people how little we care,"
she sniffs. She craves a different
kind of buzz. She'll get it, too. This
is 2013.
In the middle of the 20 pages
of blackness, there's room for just
two actual photographs of the new
woman under wild torrents of hair,
each framed in a sudden, shocking
flash of white light. Wow. So young.
So in control. So 'What's next?'.
The visitor makes his way to the
counter to pre-order her next LP.
Melodrama
. It's a lovely day to be
caught in the rain.
pleads, a last gasp
of desperation in the
crackling grooves of
Glory Box
. "Give me
a reason to be… a
woman."
Grainy, glossy
images inside
the gatefold, like
closed-circuit screen-
shots from a crime
scene, complete a
gorgeously cinematic
package. To the
alien forensic party,
Dummy
must read
like a fabulous 3D
freeze-frame from
the point where everything started
to go terribly wrong for these Earth
women.
Still, they were nothing if not
resilient. Take this
AmyWinehouse
character. They tried to make her
go to rehab, but she made it quite
clear she was immovably opposed.
The guy with the rolled-up sleeves
on his skull t-shirt sounds like a
nasty piece of work, but she flirts
with that kinda danger in much the
Michael Dwyer tracks through 60 years of bona fide classics
from the Female Vocal vinyl racks of Universal:
Ella & Louis
,
Dusty In Memphis
, Portishead's
Dummy
, AmyWinehouse's
Back To Black
and
Pure Heroine
by Lorde.
Words
Michael Dwyer
Pure Heroine
Back To Black
Dummy
Dusty In Memphis
Ella & Louis
They tried to make her go to rehab, but she
made it quite clear she was immovably opposed