Alfie! The Songs of Burt Bacharach, Prophone ***1/2

There’s no shortage of top material

Exclamatory Alfie by name, thematically Bacharach by nature: deathless songs likeably interpreted in a pared back vocals, guitar, double bass, drums setting.

‘The Look of Love,’ ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,’ ‘Walk on By,’ ‘Close to You’ make the cut. There’s no shortage of top material.

Icelandic singer Stína Ágústsdóttir – not at all Laufey-like stylistically (closer to the Norwegian Solveig Slettahjell sound circa Come in From the Rain instead) – has a persuasive contralto – a bit like Claire Martin tonally even in places and Stína is found here with Jim Mullen-like guitarist Fredrik Olsson,  Apuh double bassist Mats Dimming whose solo on ‘This Girl’s in Love’ works well and ditto his fast walking approach that gees up ‘Raindrops.’

A whole lotta love for Bacharach and David

Olsson and Dimming’s fellow Swede Jojo Djeridi (a Nordic Steve Brown) is necessarily subtle on brushes. There’s no ego here just a love of the songs and the skill to translate them into a jazz setting without too much fuss or ludicrous mannerism gimmickry. A soft shoe loungey listen, this is the band’s debut – apparently they play a few gigs around Stockholm.

OK, a few buts. ‘I Say a Little Prayer’ doesn’t quite come off. It’s a little too laboured and I for one keep harking in my mind’s ear for Aretha Franklin’s definitive version found on Aretha Now in 1968.

Dreams turn into dust – a fragment from Do You Know the Way to San Jose – among the wake up and smell the coffee wisdom that the B&D songs conjure

That’s the thing here you will be doing the same with your favourite versions of these much covered classics. So when you get to ‘A House is Not a Home’ you will be just thinking if you are anything like me of Luther Vandross so perfectly on Never Too Much (1981). One of the best songs about the bereft side of loneliness matched by the interpretation. Marcus Miller’s bass guitar lines on that treatment are a beautiful foil and so empathetic.

Of course this isn’t in the same league, that would be unfair to even expect it to be.

‘Trains and Boats and Planes’ suits Alfie most

But you know it ain’t too shabby either, my friend. And I’d go and hear Alfie live if they came to town preferably in a tiny club like yup Alfie’s on Greek Street down in the ever burgeoning jazz village of Soho or in the Spice a few streets away close to Cambridge Circus. Would make a change.

Most controversially ‘Wives and Lovers’ is here. No need for a trigger alert. However, I for one tire of the song. The lyrics of course are a male chauvinist pig’s manifesto but the nuances would nevertheless go completely over the head of today’s hideous manosphere (the song’s protagonist if you like is hoisted by his own petard if you pause to reflect) that’s part of why it’s great art. Nevertheless I usually prefer an instrumental version because the melody is from the angels and then I don’t have to think about the wince worthy words again. But it is what it is and shouldn’t be cancelled.

‘Trains and Boats and Planes’ is probably my favourite here – it seems to suit the singer’s voice so well and her scat when it comes is so natural. I’m not overly keen on the guitar comping on ‘Close To You,’ however.

But the arpegiatting on ‘Alfie’ itself is far better – again you start thinking of the Dionne Warwick version and how much better it is than Cilla Black’s. Although to be fair I like both as I have a soft spot for most things Liverpudlian music wise. And Stína here is closer to our Cilla. And again it’s a strong suit of the album. ‘Walk on By’ is given a kind of rockabilly coating at the beginning which is OK. So a good (re?)introduction to Stína – and back of the net for the songs obvs – pearls of popular music to be cherished for ever and a day.