Album of the week plus today’s playlist
Blues shouter swagger
Scooping both track of the week on marlbank for ‘I Walk Away’ and now album of the week you couldn’t accuse barn storming Scottish singer Kitti (aka Katie or Kathleen Doyle) of being a shrinking violet or skimping quality material for jazz, soul and blues fans’ delectation. Oh no.
Very different from her fellow Scot Georgia Cécile who nevertheless also knows what being soulful is all about in her own fashion delivered in a far more silky way, Kitti journeys to another place deep down inside so reflective on ‘Come on Through’ set against dreamy piano part of the hors d’oeuvres here at the beginning of these 12 tracks where there are lots of competing main courses on offer.
Boisterous horns
‘Maybe’ ramps things up a bit. Certainly in Amy Winehouse territory as is ‘Wonderland’ later, the boisterous horns full of Caledonian swagger – not a million miles from the kind of soul that Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings led us to – prove able props.
Mostly recorded over a period of four days at Beetroot Studios in Airdrie two years ago, horn and string arrangements are by Harry Weir and Seonaid Aitken.
Catch up on the latest marlbank reviews
Best bits – subjective choice, there are quite a few – are the slow gospelly swagger of ‘Wings’ and surprisingly sunny ‘Make-Up/Break-Up.’
Go back a few years and the formula here is well established on a release like 2021’s poignant ‘Pretty Girls.’
Kind of irn’bru
Already lauded in Scotland winning accolades at the Scottish Jazz Awards the singer collaborated with Liam Shortall’s corto.alto long before this year’s Mercury nominated breakthrough.
Dignified testifying
There’s a trans Atlantic universality to her sound. And the blues and jazz amalgam is a seam she knows how to navigate from deep roots and immersion in a certain black American sound. There’s nothing manicured here or too smooth which is in its sometimes shouty favour. ‘Fine Ass’ is proof of that, direct and brassy and works well. You could draw a line from Amy back to Janis Joplin and even way, way back to the uncompromising sense of the empress of the blues, Bessie Smith, even, the more lewd and suggestive the direction. The spirit is there. Would love to see her live. It’s the power above all, the brutal honesty and the way Kitti carves her way through extraneous trappings to get her point across on a song like ‘Gone’ that is so strong, raw and compelling.
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