It must be
tough to be a soul singer from the cobbling capital of Great Britain,
Northampton. And that’s in
no way a derogatory view of the medium sized midlands town, as I’ve been to the
Sixfields Stadium on several occasions and found the locals both friendly and
enthusiastic. It’s just difficult to imagine Minnie Ripperton, Marie Wells or
Aretha Franklin hailing from anywhere quite so unglamorous. Because of this, Vanessa must have had to work even
harder to become a moderately well known singer, record producer and model, and
as such she’s not averse to taking the odd risk or two.
Samson and
Delilah is certainly a risk. An album that harks back to eighties electronica
and inspired by the likes of Annie Lennox, Alison Moyet and Erasure sounds
great on paper but is so easy to get wrong. So was it a risk worth taking? Well
at least partially it works.
If anything
Vanessa leans to the Annie Lennox flavour of the eighties vibe when she would
have been better advised to go for the more Yazoo flavoured vintage. Having
said that a couple of the songs are absolute belters and worth the price of the
LP on their own, and the rest are acceptable at worst. It sounds like feint
praise, but the overall atmosphere and production of the album deserves better
than that.
The two
standout tracks are the pulsing, sophisticated Moyet-esque groove of ‘The
Apple’, which incidentally sounded even better performed live on Jules Holland,
and the rhythmic insistency of the Grace Jones inspired ‘Igneous’ and there’s
even a cute little rap towards the end that I really enjoyed. The best of the
rest is possibly the stark electro of ‘I can give you more’ but there’s not
much between any of the also-rans.
It’s fun,
different and classy. Possibly the best thing to come out of Northampton since
Adebayo Akinfenwa, (although slightly more lightweight.)
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