Curiosity killed the cat: Last night I popped along to catch the first set of Cologne band Salomea on stage in subterranean fashion at the Pizza Express Live underneath Dean Street. Led by singer-songwriter Rebekka Salomea Ziegler – artist of the year at this year’s very high profile German jazz awards the Deutscher Jazzpreis – their new album called axxxis (above) has just been released. To be frank I had never heard of the outfit before.
I wouldn’t say it’s quite my cup of tea as it turns out. But I like the singer’s voice. She reminds me of Gretchen Parlato [click for a review of GP’s latest album The Wise Ones] a lot. Rebekka’s band are pretty decent. I’d pick out the bass guitarist Oliver Lutz who does falsetto type backing vocals a bit for special mention. He could be a funky presence when needed and gave the whole sound a lot of oomph.
The best of the songs was ‘Sandcastle’ but the lyrics didn’t really hit home to me so much. I just heard these as part of the sound not as meaningful statements in themselves. In other words I didn’t come away with lots of stories from the songs.
Even though here we were sitting in a jazz club and the band has jazz chops and the singer clearly has jazz training this wasn’t really a jazz set as such. There were elements of hip hop, R&B, 80s pop even. Yannis Anft who also played a couple of sets of keys in a stack in addition to the club’s Steinway soloed a little bit in a kind of George Duke manner but the shape of the tunes wasn’t about head, individual instrument solo or anything like that. The drummer Leif Berger made a good noise and certainly the whole thing was very much in the moment mainly because of the brisk beat and grooves.
A guest flautist the London based Nigerian German Lara Aisha Ali, a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, was an unannounced guest and was quite fun in a kind of Ron Burgundy way playing a little ditty. But clearly she does more than dabble. And yet suddenly, somehow we were in Tino’s! A game Salomea relocated herself to the back of the tiny stage shimmying away and unveiling some megawatt smiles enjoying by the look of it lots of what Lara was playing.
The set opened with ‘Ru/wme‘ in other words “are you with me?” The singer – dressed in a kind of fashionable cape-like tracksuit and boots combo – her eye lids smeared with reddish eye make up – exuded strong stage command without being too overpowering. She stood in front of moustachioed bass guitarist Lutz who sported a green bass guitar and cooed appealingly in his backing vocals when required.
‘Good Life‘ had plenty of energy and maybe the set peaked too early in this regard although that dynamism didn’t hurt at all.
The keys player mainly provided to be fair pretty interesting (for once!) nu jazz-like vamps and silky licks. Later ‘Wish List’ a new song was unveiled. Again that was pretty decent. But as mentioned ‘Sandcastle’ above in the video was the one I liked best and most worth a spin.
