MARK ISAACS
Grace City (markisaacs.com)
LAST WEEKEND, I WAS IN a packed hall – seriously, it was large, it was full, it was not quiet – to see what was to be one of the final shows Dionne Warwick will play, certainly the last in this city. At 84, she went out with grace alongside a compromised voice, style alongside dampened arrangements, leaning into history more than sorely missed rhythm, but still able to present a suite of songs whose sophistication can be forgotten in the pleasures of classic pop hooks.
If that sounds like small beer when overall there were a number of criticisms, it decidedly is not because presenting pop songs whose craft and class demand more of singers and musicians, without making it sound like it demands more of the listener, gets my respect.
Mark Isaacs, best known for his compositions and explorations in jazz and orchestral works, has had a concurrent fascination with popular song. Not as some exercise in slumming it thankfully, but as another, in some ways more direct, route to connection. This EP brings five of his “pop songs” to the fore and there is about them all a level of sophistication that is subtle but significant, and yet an ease of access for any listeners that puts them in territory a younger Warwick would have enjoyed exploring.
Around various keyboards, didgeribone (what you get when you mate didgeridoo and trombone, and here played by Tjupurru), sax, drums, the strings of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, lyrics which question midlife certainties, and the considerable contribution of vocalist Deborah Dicembre, Isaacs finds a way to make the idea of easy listening a win not an insult.
Take for example, Alice, where out of an elegant expansion from single violin to a rich section created for a Dior moment, comes a smooth saxophone through-line that evokes shoulder-length hair on broad-shouldered pastel suits. Dicembre floats in, seemingly light and passing through, but as the piano firms so does the voice and the quiet tragedy underpinning the lyrics begins to land.
Things rock a bit harder, certainly when the Skunk Baxter-like guitar opens the throttle, in Open Doorway, but the cleverness is how it is not the snappy drums but the strings that really establish the song’s drive. By the time piano and guitar are duelling from a distance, around the four minute mark, the sense of jazz and rock building on each other has come organically. It would have been fascinating to hear Renee Geyer sing this.
Which isn’t to slight Dicembre, whose flexibility is shown in the contrasting pair of A Voice I Knew (a classic pop delivery, avoiding any jazz flourishes, that walks the line between vulnerable and strength recovered) and the title track (a layer of soul and a shift in phrasing bolstering the sense of life being thrown forward). But the clarity that is her real strength can be best observed in the closing track, It’s Over Now, where her voice gracefully passes through the glass curtains of piano and percussion.
If you’re looking for a track which captures almost all the elements of the EP in one package you might return to that title track, which conveniently opens the set. Saxophones and strings climb stairs, the didgeribone and organ occupy a middle ground of pulsing that seems to expand and contract without effort, and the assertiveness of the lyrics is punched through by Dicembre without noticeable escalation.
Through it all, you are aware of more happening, of little tugs on the edges of your attention, but Isaacs lets the song – lets you – find that naturally, so you can focus in or simply go with the flow. That’s not showy but it is classy.
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