Opener ‘Learning Curve’ you will find an earlier version of on 2015’s Back at the Bag; ‘I Gotta Thing 4U’ was on the relatively recent Nagenna. There is also a smattering of Sunshine Everyday tracks from the 1990s, an album worth delving into as this release will in all likelihood cue further sporadic beaverish scattergun resource to the thankfully heaving O’Malley back catalogue.
Who could not but adore the fabulous take on long time Bobby Womack staple ‘I Can Understand It’ which was also included in a swinging-from -the-chandeliers O’Malley treatment on Live at Romsey Abbey back in 2002 although this new release is if anything even better.
The Kokomo and Arrival jazz-funk “pride of Bushey” singer-keyboardist Tony O’Malley, 77, is as hip in his own way as Georgie Fame and you can’t in all sanity say that about too many people without being absurd. His style is tough and tender, groove verging on R&B but completely jazz adjacent especially when Paul Booth solos and the keyboard vamps start to spread out, modulate a bit more interestingly than most and loosen up. The world weary and yet at heart smoochy old romantic lyrics mean more than mapping out genre distinctions ever can hope to. A word in your shell-like there’s plenty of shelf-life to all this. Past sell-by dates are safely to be ignored.
Now the brother of the great playwright Mary O’Malley and a face on Arrival’s classic 70s pop hit ‘Friends’ is on this new live recording surrounded by players of the calibre of the Steve Winwood sax ace Booth who proves Boswell to O’Malley’s Dr Johnson. Geezer, the conga playing of Keith Fairbairn ain’t too shabby either. Just saying.
Live in Staines, yes really – the Surrey town of Ali G hilarity and notoriety, now with the superfluous to some “upon Thames” tacked on ever so genteelly.
A “lovely, leafy, middle-class suburb… where swans swim under the beautiful bridge”
The picture on the front artwork of local spot the Riverside tells another story and proves in its own way that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Not sure if it’s even there any more – the photo is a portrait of decrepitude – this recording was done at a 60th for a bloke called Lee and fan of the O’s in an ex serviceman’s club.
Sound is decent enough to do the job but don’t expect glossy sonics or conversely vogueish iPhone-in-a-swimming-pool type capturings when not being able to hear the detail is supposedly cool and everything is then mastered up to ear bleeding sonic boom levels to mask the very meh material itself. If you do like that aesthetic shtick prepare for disappointment.
It’s instead “human” let your hair down older person listening for the boomer and wannabe boomer in your life eventually when you get deep into the record and you can even imagine a few in the more discerning mandem and galdem younger demographic cutting a rug joining the oldies in jigging along to some of the rampant funkiness set loose as the night wore on back in 2019. Certainly extract your jazz snob digit from interstellar regions about your person first, kind reader. And have a titter of wit in case you get the wrong idea and came over all armchair philosopher in your listening cave switching this on pre-grace ahead of repairing for roast swan at high table. It’s not at all a record for cogitating on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to over a cheeky Croft Original or two pre-claret. Other current far more allegedly cerebral releases are available. But ditch the gown, guv, as school’s out for summer and merriment’s still to be had slinkily, 1970s-like, with or without the mortarboard. Dig the quality soul man and keys vibe especially the first eight or nine tracks and the main man going all reverential understandably amid a certain Staines hush and disembodied “yeahs” much later when he does Marvin’s ‘Let’s Get It On.’
Catch up
Shalosh, What We Are Made Of, ACT ***
Covering Oasis, Muse and Aqua is not only a bit but a lot gimmicky. Otherwise beyond the purist baiting the trio continue doing what they have been accomplishing for a while. That is delivering accessible contemporary piano trio sounds as “invented” back in the late 1990s by the likes of e.s.t, The Bad Plus and…
The Bad Plus, Chris Potter, Craig Taborn, Barbican, City of London ****
Playing the music of the Keith Jarrett American Quartet on their farewell tour, The Bad Plus were on uncompromising kickass form.
Alexander Claffy, Alive in Philadelphia, Vol. 1 (At Chris’ Jazz Cafe), Cellar Music ****
Leaps out of the speakers: what a very happening live album from a stellar US band playing a Coltrane tune you rarely hear on a record these days among other gems. Includes formidable sax playing from Seamus Blake and Jaleel Shaw.
