Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More music like this, please!, March 2, 2008
I cannot rate this one highly enough. Brit-Schooler and UK newcomer Tawiah is the winner of a 'BBC Worldwide Best Newcomer' award and she is such a breath of fresh air it's barely believable. "Time Out" magazine recently described her as a "nu-soul girl with chops to put the post-Winehouse crowd to shame". Whatever that means. She's also toured with Mark Ronson as his "honourary female singer", filling in for muses Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen on "Valerie" and "Oh My God". Once again, I have my buddy Joseph to thank for bringing her to my attention. I only had to listen to a few seconds of a song to know I had to get this disc.
This 6-track EP features "Watch Out", which is also track #2 on Gilles Peterson's (there's that name again) 'Tunes of the Year' and I also read somewhere that it made iTunes single of the week recently.
But none of that really matters. "Watch Out" is a beautiful tune in the spirit of Jill Scott's earlier days. Tawiah sounds clear, unfettered and utterly soulful, as she sings notes of caution against getting "carried away" with someone with whom she's meant to be "just friends". As soon as I heard the guitar intro to the song, I knew I was going to love it and I wasn't wrong
On "Another One", she pays homage to the 'good old days' and sings about love gone wrong over a typical 80s beat. Imagine a woman singing over Cameo beats, circa 1984. Tawiah actually leads into the song by telling us how she went through her dad's old records one day and tried to imagine what her track would sound like if she were a recording artiste back in the day. She even puts on a faux American accent for effect and it adds humour to what is another brilliant track, particularly if you're a fan of music from that era.
"Boy From The Ends" is a quirky track about having romantic feelings towards a boy from the neighbourhood. "Oh, my God, witness the fitness," she says at the intro and I fell over laughing at the part where Tawiah's 'friends' playfully 'taunt' her with the playground chant: "He likes you, he likes you. Tawiah, he likes you".
"Everystep" is a banging house track with a chorus of background singers towards the second half of the song can only be described as heavenly. This is a tune crying out for an extended club mix.
The interlude showcases her doing a 34sec acapella verse to the applause of her audience and the closer, "Broken Heart", which kind of speaks for itself, once again reminds me of Jill Scott back when she first started out.
There's a small group of female artistes here in the UK, who are having incredible success with music clearly inspired, directed even, by music from times past. Amy Winehouse is the most popular example probably but there are also people coming down the pike like Adele and Duffy and I'm so happy to see someone like Tawiah take her place alongside them. It would be nice if she can achieve comparable success levels but whether she will or not remains to be seen. If she doesn't, it will not be due to a deficiency of talent and I would really love to see her play live. I'm pretty sure she'd be awesome. (She actually played a gig down in London last Thursday but I wasn't able to make it. My friend Joseph did though, the lucky cow).
Personally, I can't wait for her to bring out a full album. I love her music and I love her voice even more. She co-wrote all the tracks with multi-instumentalist producer Jodi Milliner, except for "Watch Out", which was written by Tawiah, Milliner and Michelle Escoffrey. Five stars are not nearly enough. More music like this, please.
|
|
|
|
Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.
- the new music site from IMDb and Amazon.
