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Lady Blackbird review – flamboyance and nuance from late-blossoming jazz-soul star
Behind the impressive Grace Jones-esque stage outfits, the US singer is blessed with both lung power and sensitivity
She found her mojo in 2020 when a simultaneously stark yet sultry cover of Nina Simone’ 1963 civil rights lament Blackbird, released in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, swivelled heads her way. Backed by a low-key four-piece jazzy band, with her producer and co-writer Chris Seefried on guitar, she fully inhabits No One Can Love Me (Like You Do), a magnificent Motown-style ballad from her brilliant second album, Slang Spirituals. After vanishing from stage and re-appearing in the Palladium’s stalls, she throws herself into the lithe, funky gospel of Like a Woman, then breathes aching melancholy into the folk enigma Tim Hardin’s It’ll Never Happen Again.
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