Cultures of Soul, around since 2010 in the flu ridden city of Boston has been involved with putting out and promoting a number of singles of the soul and funk variety, including this one from locals Jordan Valentine and the Sunday Saints who cover "Tell me what's on your mind" on the A-Side, and waste's no time in getting right into Jordan's heavy soul vocal, the star of the show. It's recorded clear as hell, but that's probably thanks to the perpetually fuzzy singles I'm used to, so listening to this crystal horn section, organs and jittery electric is all adding up to a funk and soul you don't get to much of these days. But horizons have expanded thanks to electric cowbell and colemine records, and along comes another label delivering up this ridiculously impressive contemporary soul/funk and out of Boston no less.
It's got to be imntimidating to accompany an epic kind of orchestral funk like this, you're steering this funk ship and better have the combined skills in range and dynamics to match everything here and she's heading this up easily.... with emotion.
Convincing you to tell her what's on your mind, in the classic struggle of (mis)communication between the sexes. A slow dfade out almost does this a disservice...I mean....guys, she's still going.
B-Side's "Follow Me" has me going back in time for a minute - well even this source genre is WAY before my time, but thinking about this coming out in the past few months has me thinking about what it might have been like to walk back from the record store with something like this back in the day, a plain sleeve black vinyl 45. Perfectly classic, they're really blowing out this track... she's losing her mind and hitting big vibrato with the guitar almost going into rock places, with a Make Up scream, the gospel yeh-yeh now informing this in a weird way. Remember when I was talking about Jordan being able to match that instrumentation? Well they do their best to keep up with her on this side in wah licks, the best kind and a slow buildup to bust out again...is that the funk equivalent of the heavy drop in dubstep?
What am I even talking about. A wah solo and stuttery groove - chicken head, cut off step, it's overwhelming on vinyl, this huge sound they insist on pummeling you with, that's the breaks.
Get this from Cultures of Soul who says:
Growing up Jordan's been heavily influenced by her mother's southern cooking and her love of Motown. There are two great tracks on this 7 inch out now. The A side is a masterful cover of "Tell Me What's On Your Mind" and the B side is an original sister funk track with howls of joy reminiscent of Betty Davis.
The kind folks over at CoS gave me a few extra copies of their releases if you want to send me an email at jdean99 at gmail I'd be happy to send them your way...along with some new 7inches stickers.
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