Oh smooth, sweet, soul music!
The electronic soul Danish band Quadron, mostly consisting of Singer Coco O. and musician producer Robin Hannibal, was playing at Amoeba music today.
Before seeing them tonight, I had just listened to the playful ‘Pressure’ (which they of course performed) and thought it was very Motown sounding, very familiar with its upbeat and sweet melody, and a terribly addictive ‘trying, trying, trying’ chorus.
Actually the song would be really sweet if these lyrics were not so damned ironically cruel: ‘I’ve been trying to get you under my pressure/I’ve been trying to hurt you for as long as I can remember/Looking for the spineless point, and change your summer into winter’.
Before singing it, Coco said the song was not about love but about getting someone, like your little sister, down! But her voice is so clear and delicate, she could sing anything and turn it in into a delicious and charming thing. Her vocal ability is probably the most important asset of the band. Her light and stunning delivery flies over the other instruments’ phrases and never misses a variation of tone, as if she was sometimes improvising with the musicians. A bass, some moaning trumpets and discreet saxophones, a rare clarinet and some omnipresent bongos were accompanied by keyboard and back-up voices generated by a computer. It’s stylish music at its best, curiously upbeat at times, nonchalant at other times.
If ‘Pressure’ and ‘Slippin’ will instantly hook you, the other songs relay more on jazz and soul phrases with no real catchy tunes, but it was only my first listening. Coco can be either a Diana Ross (‘Pressure’), or a Sade without the boring stare (‘Average fruit’) and can certainly sing anything, from funky songs to slow soulful tunes like ‘Day’.
‘It’s weird to sing during daylight’ she said at one point of the show. True, you would expect to listen to this kind of music in the dark and silky atmosphere of a nightclub.