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Clip of the Week

Dawes’ 2022 ‘Misadventures Of Doomscroller’ album saw the band take a left turn. Featuring just six tracks, the record embraced jazz and progressive rock influences. The first part of Someone Else’s Café / Doomscroller Tries To Relax is led by Wylie Gelber’s handmade bass. Glorious harmonies bathe the next, on the brink of our despair. It’s a melting pot of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Birdland by Weather Report and John Miles’ Music… (READ ON)

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This Week’s Book Choice

“Tonight The Music Seems So Loud” by Sathnam Sanghera (Picador, 2026)

Wham, bam! I am a man
Job or no job, you can’t tell me that I’m not
Do you enjoy what you do?
If not, just stop
Don’t stay there and rot

Lyrics from Wham’s social commentary rap pop crossover song that helped announce George Michael to the world. Historian and George Michael superfan Sathnam Sanghera’s wonderful dive into the life of one of the biggest pop stars of all time proves these lyrics from an 18-year-old Michael to be remarkably profound.

As the book veers between early shyness and awkwardness through success, mega success, stratospheric success, ultimate fall from grace and the climb back to acceptance, the question “Do you enjoy what you do?” is never far away from your thoughts. The answer sadly is probably not. His drive for fame, perfection (12 sax players tried for Careless Whisper?) under the cloud of his hidden sexuality leaves you with a sense he may well have been happier in the shadows.

The author, also being from an immigrant family, confounds those who would mock him about his love of such a throwaway pop star. A tangible, genuine affection for George Michael despite his many faults lends an endearing angle to a complex and at times disturbing story. His public outing is still shocking in its self-inflicted brutality. The starkness of the years before his death quite shattering. Thankfully there are also wonderful reminders of George Michael’s extraordinary self-taught gift for singing and song writing to lift the mood.

Sanghera gives a real insight into what this frankly unbelievable life must have been like which confirms my long-held belief that I’ll take the fortune but you can keep the fame. A remarkable book that I highly recommend. Dave Ross

Read all our previous book reviews here.

Toppermost Recommends

Marlena Shaw – The Spice of Life

(Limited edition 180-gram vinyl LP via the Thousand Club / Fontana series)

I dropped this reissue of Marlena Shaw’s classic 1969 genre-crossing album onto the deck with some excitement. It’s never quite received the wider attention it deserves and has long been a holy grail for crate-diggers searching for lost soul masterpieces. You’ll no doubt know “California Soul”, a belated radio and club hit in the UK. But other tracks might sound a bit familiar too. My 22-year-old had never heard of Marlena but recognised some of the much-sampled grooves that filled the speakers as the needle settled into the vinyl.

This new analogue pressing in Fontana’s Thousand Club series sparkles and shines and comes complete with some in-depth sleeve notes from Kevin Le Gendre. It makes total sense in the 2020s, whilst also sounding very 1969. Released that year on Chess Records’ jazz subsidiary Cadet, The Spice of Life was arranged by Chess visionaries Charles Stepney and Richard Evans and is a masterclass in late-sixties Chicago soul, drawing on orchestral jazz, blues and proto-funk. Shaw’s formidable vocals are grounded in a soulful grit and the breaks on tracks like “Woman of the Ghetto” and “Liberation Conversation” have bolstered countless hip-hop tracks.

“Woman of the Ghetto”, co-written by Shaw, stands as one of the era’s most searing protest anthems. “Where Can I Go?” and “Go Away Little Boy” are gorgeous exercises in the kind of lounge-soul that should have marked out Shaw, who died in 2024, as the major jazz singer, à la Dinah Washington, that she never quite was. Her version of “I Wish I Knew (How it Would Feel to be Free)” bubbles along in a peppy, gospel-tinged yearn. Then there’s her cover of Ashford & Simpson’s “California Soul”, I guess now Shaw’s signature song but a year earlier given a rudimentary run-through by the 5th Dimension. Shaw’s rendition remains the untouchable standard. Almost sixty years on from the era of flower-power and socially-conscious soul, these tracks sound as fresh as a daisy and as relevant as ever.

I love the drama of Charles Stepney’s baroque psychedelic-tinged arrangements on this record – he’s perhaps better known for sorting strings and wind on albums by Minnie Riperton and Rotary Connection. For The Spice of Life, he scored an amazing backdrop that provides a radiance and buoyancy to the compositions. Shaw smoulders and moans in your ear while the cinematic arrangements take you on a big-screen, pop-soul adventure.

Throughout, the rhythm section – featuring Cadet house royalty like guitarist Phil Upchurch and drummer Morris Jennings plus some future Earth, Wind & Fire and Miles Davis sidemen – dig deep and empty their pockets with some generous backbeats. Rather than sounding scattered, The Spice of Life captures an artist in total command of her range, framed by a production that was years ahead of its time. This is a timeless celebration of vocal virtuosity and an indispensable landmark in soul-jazz history. If you know and love Dusty Springfield’s romantic classic Dusty in Memphis from the same year, I recommend heading north to Chicago and giving the more tough and muscular Spice of Life a listen. Rob Webb