Fallen Angel
Sarah-Jane Morris (featuring Marc Ribot) : August (UK,2000)*°°
Fallen AngelSarah-Jane Morris : Love and Pain (UK,2001)*
Usually I never review or bother much about singers veering towards the entertainment school, but reality never limits itself to categorizations for clear boundaries. Sarah Jane Morris is wife of a Pogues musician, did drama-school, but unsatisfied with it, never got the final degree, started singing occasionally and received success with it. Without belonging really anywhere (pop, entertainment, jazz, soul,..) she followed her path partly naturally and perhaps as well randomly at the same time. It grew, where at a certain point she even had a commercial pop hit with Communards in 1986, "Don't leave me this way". These two releases, “August” and “Love and pain” are released on her private label.
“August” starts closer to the art of performance into a music concept. It begins with this earlier mentioned song, in a version, much more interesting than the pushy hit. Sarah’s singing here has something “black” in her voice, a bit in the tradition of soulblues-voices with some emotional effects in the voice. With Marc Ribot’s acoustic guitar at first the chosen songs are stripped down to some essence. Most of the band tracks are much more mainstream pop orientated, like “Piece of my heart”, or “Blind Old Friends”, an approach which I personally don't like. My favourites are performances, like “Into my arms” or “Chelsea Hotel” which are musically performed with an approach of something of a technical so called feel of expression. Most often ‘acting’ still is part of the performance, which makes her voice still entertainment related, instead of driven by a musically inspired goal, -something which I usually prefer to promote. Sarah has a very good vocal potential, but sadly not many of her performances come from very deep inside.
“Love and Pain” is a groove funkpop release. I consider this as mostly entertainment related, and not built from musical ideas, so I won’t say much about it. From that one, for me "Fields of Wheat", a slower song, stands out.
