OLIVIA DEAN – THE ART OF LOVING; ST PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES – ST PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- 44 minutes ago
- 5 min read
OLIVIA DEAN
The Art Of Loving (Universal)
ST PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES
St Paul And The Broken Bones (Oasis Pizza/Thirty Tigers)
BETWEEN MUSCULAR BAR GROOVES and elegant clubland moves, between the brassy southern sounds of the Stax, American and Muscle Shoals studios and the pin-perfect more velvety fruits of Detroit and New York ones, between packed bodies too hot under the low ceilings and seated bodies so cool under the coffered ceilings, looks like some vast musical distance.
That’s why, visually and thematically, London’s Olivia Dean, now with two albums to her name and shows in the type of halls where you catch a bus from the back row to the stage, and Birmingham, Alabama’s St Paul & The Broken Bones, four more albums to the good in rooms where singers can bodysurf from stage to the back, and back again, during a couple of verses, naturally are assumed be divided by a major philosophical gulf.
But is there really? Surely, it’s shades of the same music: in varying degrees, a bit of this from the church, a bit of that from the bar, and a dab from the mainstream of pop music to make the transition easier. Then add sex and guilt to love and hope, et voila! After that it’s more like pump it up and you get the muscle, ease it back and you get the velvet, crease it just so and … well, we will get to that in a minute.
Dean’s first album was a perfectly serviceable modern-as-retro soul record that, in the approved, post-Winehouse manner, lightly incorporated some jazz in the vocals, smoothed it its dress down for a nod at the ‘50s, but pulled its hem up for a splash of the ‘60s. She sounded good without sounding distinctive and the songs did everything they needed to do without ever threatening to be adventurous.
It was fine but she knew just as much as we did that she was going to have to change something to matter.
On the other side of the Atlantic, after three albums of boisterous, indoor-party energy, St Paul & The Broken Bones – a six-piece fronted by Paul Janeway but usually involving all members in the writing – with that small but enthused market under control, went swinging to the bleachers with a couple of albums increasingly laced with psychedelia, rock, hip hop and lyrical themes pulling from sources beyond the standard. The most recent was called Angels In Science Fiction, and that wasn’t accidental, a foray into a possible future.
Beyond making the band buzz with refreshing moves, it worked well, though maybe never feeling quite as natural to fans, and maybe the band.
Come 2025 and decisive moves have been made by each of Dean and the band, seemingly in opposite directions but in truth reaching for the same point: soul music that holds itself connected with more than traditions. If one is more surprising than the other, it says as much about the relative expectations than the ability or variety.
On The Art Of Loving, Dean sheds the most obvious soul affectations but retains the feel of gliding across grooves and elegant delivery of the form, smooth yet not stripped of some human frailty. The songs lean to ballads but have enough lightness to show a sensibility inclined to balance and not burdened by the weight of needing to spell out big emotions – there may have been the temptation to give A Couple Minutes a kind of drop to your knees, fists clenched to the heart climax, for example, and it may well have worked. But resisting the temptation gives the song and appealing simplicity.
Dancing is not demanded, but it’s not out of the question either. The rhythmic momentum of Something Inbetween and Nice To Each Other, both urban nighttime drives on empty streets, recall Everything But The Girl between their pop and dance floor periods. It’s a mood more than a tempo, which is the foundation of most of these songs, right down to the slightly worn but not yet wearied final track, I’ve Seen It.
To this foundation Dean adds stronger melodies that don’t need overselling, allowing her to lean into something closer to Dionne Warwick than the belters – emotionally precise rather than spilling over. Close Up tamps the brass so that it works as a lower-end buffer to the calm balladry, while across its surface Dean rolls out the state of play confidently. Meanwhile, So Easy (To Fall In Love) elevates a horn in the Bacharach manner alongside the light Brazilian rhythm that asks for a hand on the lower back.
It’s not just nicely done, it’s not just really good for a twentysomething relative newcomer, it’s just good. The Art Of Loving and Dean do not need patronising, they have earned the plaudits.
Theoretically, it’s a simpler ask for St Paul And The Broken Bones: make party, make show. But if it was that easy, every second soul band in Australia would be superstars with a brass section swinging in time, a frontwoman/man sweating up a storm, and heartbreak never sounding so good.
Having drafted in producer/writer Eg White (who’s been soul adjacent before, having written with Adele and Joss Stone among a slew of other hits he has been party to) the band is quite prepared to put a nice sheen on its high energy fare and a nice suit on its sound. And the results feel radio-ready, but not entirely stripped of its sweat: Janeway’s vocals throaty rather than stage-rough at the bottom and holy pleading at the top; strings at the ready, like bonus cavalry ready to deploy; the occasional fuzz on guitars blending in rather than looking to dominate, except for the sharp reminder of those recent rockier explorations in Ooo-Wee.
And you can see their point when the reaching out/pulling back rhythm of Sushi And Coca-Cola is met with a drawling melody, the nod to Lauryn Hill’s Doo Wop (That Thing), itself a throwback tribute touched by a healthy hip hop diet, is hardly subtle but also potent.
Sitting In The Corner’s double-time attack – parping brass interjecting like an aggressive Greek chorus, guitar dancing on the one spot, and the finger-snap rhythm as crisp as fresh celery – is so clearly delineated that you can identify everyone involved almost by name. The piano and organ interplay in Fall Moon brings some Hi Studios butter to the grunt, the vocals thrown forward in Stars Above are almost too easy, and while the Janeway growl is on display in Change A Life, the underpinnings are smooth-as.
While this is the sixth album, making it self-titled is a statement of sorts about claiming territory, suggesting a rebirth maybe. More than the bar and primed for the car stereo? They could do worse.
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