ALICE RUSSELL HEARTBREAKER

It seems that the British soul train keeps on going like the little engine that could. With Adele exploding on an international level, going on to record the track for Skyfall earlier this year, and with the previous and various successes of the late, great and interminably troubled Amy Winehouse, it's a kind of music that's obviously captured the hearts and minds of everybody all over the world, and - too lazy to list all the recent soul singers we can think of - we'll leave you to ruminate over the sometimes bombastic, sometimes unimaginably gentle, world of soul.

In the meantime, that tradition continues with the powerful voice of the beautiful Alice Russell. Finding inspiration in Gospel music and soul legends like Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, she's been simultaneously making music and touring since the release of her debut album Under The Munka Moon in 2004. We've not heard of her, or even heard her music, before now but this first taster of what she has to offer sure is impressive and leaving us wanting to hear more.

Here's her latest single, chalked for release 19th November, 'Heartbreaker'. Enjoy.

The music of this track has some great quirks to it, with light keys and a twiddly guitar that is like a little cherry on top of the dark funk that is the base of the song. There's a sense loss in the music, by turns lazily sensual and decidedly frank, that provides the perfect cushion, or pedestal, for Alice Russell's stunning vocals. Able to switch between high notes with next to no volume, and loud, lung-bursting lamentations of her fate (the very essence of soul), her voice catapults feeling and emotion right into the air, it falling as downpours of sentiment that perfectly illustrate the song's title - modern soul with a strong heart.

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Alice Russell on Facebook
Alice Russell on Twitter
Alice Russell on Last.fm
Alice Russell on Myspace
Alice Russell's official site
Alice Russell's Wikipedia page

MIA 27 TRIBUTE

Spooky, eerie, strange, controversial, stupid, bad, not up to scratch, brilliant, wonderful, different, wreathed in mystique, fantastic - these are just a few of the words that the 200,000+ minds who have listened to M.I.A.'s new tribute track '27' might have thought of it. What do you think of it?



It is indeed a spooky sound, a thin beat applied like an exotic lotion throughout and speckled with crackles and fizzes that sound so ephemeral that MIA might have made this in some alternate dimension. The lyrics to this song are darkly honest, and pertain mainly to the whole 27 club thing, charting her friendship before a friend killed themselves at the age of 27 (whether this is analogous to an actual real event, I'm unsure). The stand-out line, for me, is the bleakly mundane, "I bought you coffee and a muffin, and you quoted me some Lenin", followed by the stark and pretty horrible closer: "When I left, you befriended a rope, and I saw you both were hanging."

Obviously this is a tribute to Amy Winehouse - whether or not it's actually about her, her death clearly sparked the making of this song. But how did she do it so quickly? Well, it's actually an unfinished demo that the superstar music-maker had made previously, and she said it was a dedication to "all my friends who died at 27", announcing this with a tweet that read: "I recorded this song B4 vickileekx and never put it out. It's a unfinished demo. R.I.P Amy".

Typically, The Daily Mail has reported this with some amount of contention - "However, it has been seen as not only being too soon after the singer's death, but in very bad taste as well." This is due to the subject matter, purportedly being too much about the tough times that people go through with addiction, plus romanticising the whole 27 thing. But what can be seen as harrowing can also be seen as the truth, and what can be seen as romanticising can equally be seen as a folly of youth.

Either way, in all fairness, it's a song and it was done as a tribute. It's controversial, but if people see it as negative, be that on their own thick, closed-minded heads. And it's a decent track too. Shut up.

• Check MIA's one-track SoundCloud - I'm sure there'll be more stuff up soon
• Here's her official site
• Follow MIA on Twitter

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RIP AMY WINEHOUSE

Search 'Amy Winehouse' on Google images and instantly you will see the rocky late-night drug-infused path that has lead precariously to this sad day. Out of the 8 million-plus results, there are only a few good pictures - you know, like this one to the right, and other pictures of her looking resplendent as indeed she was. However, she was a troubled soul - though a talented singer unrivalled by many others in her generation, her scuffles with drugs and one bad romance in particular became larger problems in her life.

Often spotted making drunken appearances around London (there are many instances you could list - for example, heckling Bono during his acceptance speech at the Q Music Awards 2006 with a drunken "Shut up! No one gives a fuck!") it all came to a head most recently at a performance - or lack of one - in Belgrade; too drunk, she threw her microphone, stumbled on and off stage mumbling her words. Ultimately this resulted in her cancelling the remainder of the tour.

Sadly, today has seen the death of an amazing singer who had potential to continue creating songs that resonated strongly in everyone's hearts. At age 27, she joins a host of musical talent who died at that age - Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrisson and Janis Joplin being just three. It's a sad fact of life that often with creative talent, or let's say genius, it comes accompanied with a large appetite for yielding easily to psychological problems - often in the form of drink and drugs. That in mind, here is my favourite Amy Winehouse song for your listening pleasure: the wonderfully black-humoured drug-referencing relaxed motown-styled and upbeat 'Addicted'. RIP Amy Winehouse, 1983 - 2011.


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