Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
At one time it was one of the biggest music labels on the planet, it spawned the idea of power and elegance all wrapped up in one hybrid motion and the hits kept coming and the music kept on playing. Like Detroit itself, the sound of Motown is unfashionable to many now, the factories, the people, the abundant sound, in many ways a former glory in which dreams were once made and in which thousands of artists have revelled in.
Motown may be a distant dream, its golden and silver age long gone in the distance and the relics of a once mighty empire reduced to listening to singles with dust upon them or at the very least marvelling in the presence of one of the great artists of all time in Marvin Gaye; however from out of Woodstock, more famous perhaps for its association with ideal of the free love culture, comes the sensational Simi Stone and her self-titled debut album.
Owing much to the ethos of Motown but not restricted to its in part self destruction, Ms. Stone’s music combines the awareness of Pop and the sensitivity of soul with just that wonderful hint of Jazz infusion to make this album, not only sound creatively unique but also outstandingly catchy and played out with that most important hook of all, that of passionate belief.
Written alongside David Baron, the album sparks with so much energy that a fourth of July celebration seems like a torch beam directing The Who on stage at Woodstock, a firecracker let off into a fish-less lake, not the eruption of plasma from the Sun hurtling through space and with planets quacking in its wake.
The sound is not just magical, it really enthuses the brain to devour each song piece by piece, soulful, beautiful and charming, each song spurs the plasma on and on, only letting go when the eruption is too hot to contain any longer.
With music supplied by Zachary Alford, Sara Lee, the excellent Gail Ann Dorsey, Danny Blume and David Baron, the debut eponymous album is enormous, it doesn’t grind along or leave you wanting more as with the case of a Motown song, it leaves you spent, wonderfully exhausted and utterly content to have been in its company.
Tracks such as Good Friend, Benny, Missing You, Don’t Come Back, the terrifyingly self rationalising exquisiteness of Good Girl and the finale of I Do all make the album an explosion of sound so large and expansive that it cannot be controlled, it is an album of sincerity. Not the first great thing to come out of Woodstock but arguably the finest. A cracker of a debut!
Simi Stone is released by Reveal Records on June 8th.
Ian D. Hall