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Singer Joy Crookes
Photo:
Roberto Ricciuti / Redferns / Getty Images
Album of the week:
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Album cover of »Skin«
Should there ever be a new James Bond film, the London singer Joy Crookes is recommended as the first choice for the title song. The British agent would have to be prepared to be enlightened rather than laughed at: "You are a man with a mission, but you seem to forget that you were born through a woman," sings the 23-year-old in her stunning Piano ballad »Power« and demands: »Show some fucking respect!«.
The song itself is older, Crookes likes to play it at the end of their concerts, it is part of their manifesto. The daughter of an Irishman and a mother from Bangladesh is one of the stars of a new, young soul scene in Great Britain, along with singers such as Arlo Parks, Jorja Smith and Celeste. Since 2017 she has released singles and EPs in loose succession, was nominated early by the Brit Awards as a »Rising Star« and is now releasing her debut album with »Skin«. "Power" is also included on it, in a version now recorded with more luxury and musical depth at Abbey Road Studios.
The solidity of the production goes well with Crookes, who counts jazz pioneers like Nina Simone and Billie Holiday among her role models, women who, as she believes, were only able to move freely in their music during their lifetime. Just as experienced, combative and intoxicatingly resilient like these divas, Crookes himself now sounds on »Skin«. The music for her swing singing is often as nostalgic as it was with Amy Winehouse, with whom she has already been compared with a somewhat helpless addiction to categorization, but the themes that Crookes sets are contemporary and urban, her traditional sound is subtly interwoven with electronic accents. In an interview, she once said that she would prefer not to label her music with attributes of so-called black music, but simply as
an alternative:
It must be possible "to classify myself as a non-white person in something that has nothing to do with the color of my skin."
The songs, written since she was 15 and taught herself bass, piano and guitar, are about questions of identity, the feat of strength to assert oneself in a white society.
The touching "Unlearn You" is about coping with sexual abuse, on the electronic, trip-hop-like "19th Floor" she reflects on early experiences of poverty and discrimination when she visited her Bengali grandmother in the South London social housing in Elephant & Castle, where she also spent large parts of her childhood.
"Kingdom", the most political song on the album, settles accounts with the ignorant government of her homeland: "No such thing as a kingdom when tomorrow's done for the children," she sings poisonously, a self-confident ambassador of a diverse, multiethnic England whose elite children still held back from minorities from advancement.
She herself no longer hides her origins in order to adapt.
She proudly shows herself in the traditional costume of her East Indian ancestors in Instagram posts and video clips.
"Don't you know that the skin you were given was made to live in?" She asks in the title track, another ballad that at first seems delicate and fragile, but which is part of a strong musical self-liberation.
Which is just beginning.
(8.0)
Listened briefly:
Coldplay - "Music of the Spheres"
Coldplay were never Jefferson Airplanes, they preferred to skip this step in order to end up with the over-blown kitsch rock of Jefferson Starship: "Higher Power", the single from the BMW commercial, is the new "We Build This City", you have to just listen to the synthesizer cascades, produced, like the rest of the album, by Swedish hit guru Max "Oops! ... I Did It Again" Martin. »Humankind« even surpasses the kitsch of the killers, followed by an alien choir, Selena Gomez, BTS and Chris Martin's little daughter Apple as guests and co-songwriter. It seems very calculated to record a space album in view of the first tourist space flights, after somehow the band didn't really buy their concern for the well-being of the earth, including the ecologically motivated refusal to tour.So now look at it from above with a whacky eighties pop song (including »My Universe«) and possibly hope for a lucrative soundtrack collab with Space X or Blue Origin. The ten-minute »Coloratura« stretches into the infinite musical vacuum of the great galactic rock opera aka Pink Floyd. Even U2 wouldn't dare to do that. Though who knows. (1.0)
Finneas - »Optimist«
How do you deal with just being the big brother all the time?
Billie Eilish's co-songwriter and producer Finneas takes his second-hand fame with humor, which he recently showed as a guest in a very funny video clip by James Blake and now with self-deprecating songs like "Happy Now" or "Hurt Locker" from his likable humble debut album.
This old-fashioned »optimist« has little to do with the hypermodern ASMR pop from sister Billie: Finneas writes biting Zeitgeist reviews like »The Kids Are All Dying«, subtle nostalgia hymns like »The 90s«, clever everyday observations and beautiful piano -Ballades.
Nothing that storytellers like Ben Folds, Ben Lee or Brendan Benson would not have done without a Grammy and world fame, but still: He's not the bad guy, duh.
(7.5)
Marteria - »5.
Dimension"
Nice diss against the Fanta Vier with the album title, but only by the way.
In fact, Marteria, the kicking rapper from Rostock, is leaving the hip-hop dimension with his outstanding new album to land in an electronic minimal groove that was elegantly produced for him by DJ Koze, The Krauts and Siriusmo.
"Love, Peace & Happiness" (with Etna and Yasha) has long been the chillout hymn that should carry us relaxed through autumn.
“Beach child” Marteria encounters the lockdown melancholy with pragmatic laconism: “The clock is also running out here, but at least there is sand in it”.
An album as irresistible as a bag of Haribo Colorado.
(7.9)
Xenia Rubinos - "Una Rosa"
Five years ago we predicted the breakthrough for the Brooklyn rap artist Xenia Rubinos at this point.
Didn't work.
But that's not bad at all, because who knows whether the musician who trained at Berklee College with roots in Puerto Rico and Cuba would have made such a challenging album as "Una Rosa": Punk, R&B, jazz and hip-hop harmonize and collide Latin influences from electronics producer Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, Afro-Cuban gospel from Ìfé or poems by José Martí, Rubinos' texts deal with police violence and capitalism and questions of identity in the Hispanic US community.
The longing melody of the title track, an old danzón, once jingled the singing, tinkling neon plastic flower of her grandmother.
Caribbean futurism.
(8.0)