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Arooj Aftab review – crackling wit and songs of elegiac beauty
Boundaries disappear as the extraordinary Grammy-winning Pakistani-American singer showcases her lithe latest album, Night Reign – and hands out whiskey, T-shirts and roses…
Most often her extraordinary voice soars and weaves, but on the folk jazz of Last Night(based on a Rumi poem) she slips into tones of clear, calm authority, summoning escalating emotion from its simple, repetitive lyrics. The Night Reign material is so fresh that Aftab has to check the lyrics before starting the gently eddying Na Gul(“Oh, this is one I really don’t know”), but that lithe, extrovert, unpredictable album gives her live show a vibrant new pulse. Riley, a guitarist of such quicksilver dexterity that every solo inspires awestruck applause, takes up the sonica, a sitar-shaped synthesiser whose sound variously resembles bagpipes, theremin and birdsong, before Aftab steers the song to its elegiac conclusion.
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