Although it was preceded by a few EPs, Emma-Jean Thackray’s debut full-length Yellow still connects like an audacious but steady-handed breakthrough, mingling genres with confidence and smarts. Suffice it to say that listeners with collections encompassing funky R&B, jazz of the spiritual, fusion, and avant-garde persuasions, and groove-oriented but expansive electronica and hip-hop, will find much to enjoy in this album, which has been out for a while but hit vinyl in the USA just last week via Thackray’s own label Movementt in affiliation with Warp. Skillful compositions and arrangements for brass and vocals intensify the deft combination of styles, with the whole secure as one of the best albums of 2021.
Leeds-born and London-based Emma-Jean Thackray studied jazz trumpet at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama with instructor Keith Tippett and then followed that with a master’s degree in jazz orchestral composition at Trinity Conservatoire of Music and Dance under the tutelage of composers Issie Barratt and Errollyn Wallen.
These achievements are deserving of a highlight, as Yellow is clearly the byproduct of ability that’s honed through both disciplined study and playing for the sheer joy if it. Put another way, Thackray didn’t arrive at Yellow by accident, and while she’s not shy about her influences, this set’s 14 tacks are the result of much more than just good taste in records.
Although Thackray wastes no time in establishing the album’s bold flow, I never got the impression that she felt there was something she had to prove. Instead, with a glorious mixture recalling Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra in “Mercury,” she’s clearly trying to hook the listener and then slowly reel them in. But there are distinct elements as well, such as the application of synths, Thackray’s superb trumpet solo, and also the bedrock of Ben Kelly’s tuba, here delivering an unwavering line that reminded me, just a little, of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.
The following track “Say Something,” differs sharply, at least initially, setting course as a ’90s-style techno-pop club groover, but with assorted injections of an older vintage, including Lyle Burton’s electric piano, then a decidedly fusion-esque (or even light prog) synth solo, and in the later portion, a choral infusion that is in the tradition of Mary Lou Williams’ Black Christ of the Andes, Andrew Hill’s Lift Every Voice, and Bobby Hutcherson’s Now!
While “Mercury” wraps up with a bit of spoken poetics that nicely enhances the track’s overall liberational sensibility, in “Say Something,” Thackray is revealed as a very capable singer in an R&B mode. But the next cut, “About That,” the first in a handful of short interludes throughout the record, emphasizes her skills on trumpet, hovering between early ’60s New Thing exploration and early ’70s modal fusion heat, but with a subtle turn to the funky as Thackray begins repeating the title of the track like she’s cutting a single in the summer of ’75 for the Curtom label.
“Venus” remains in this chronological vicinity, though it opens in a considerably more lush mode, with beaucoup string sweep and crashing rhythms, only to tighten up, slim down and rope that tuba back in for a progressive R&B roller (think Stevie Wonder and Jamiroquai) with bright group backing choruses and a swank piano solo complimented with some fine string playing. The intertwined vocal threads later in the tune are an absolute treat, only to be topped after a psych-out false ending with a wonderful symphonic finale.
“Green Funk” is true to its title, with a sure nod in the direction of George Clinton, but it also amplifies the layering of styles and an approach to production, undeniably cognizant of electronic music’s general impact, that marks Yellow as a non-retro trip. There is a reason Warp is involved with this record’s distribution, with this connection reinforced by the next track “Third Eye,” which ups the freshness quotient on the aforementioned progressive R&B through sheer inventiveness.
“May There Be Peace” is nearly 90 seconds of a repeated mantra (with music reminiscent of Don Cherry fucking round with singing bowls) that prepped me for a free jazz takeoff a la Coltrane’s Om, but it’s another sly fake out, serving as a prelude instead to the disco-ish “Sun,” that number driving home Thackray’s potential as a pop stylist, which is fine, as it’s but one flavor in Yellow’s taster’s banquet.
Likewise, “Golden Green” works up a deeper R&B groove that suggests Thackray could cut a whole record in this mode, perhaps with Leon Michels as producer. But doing so would undercut the methodical eclecticism that makes Yellow such a pleasure. In the past, this sort of roaming has landed musicians into the cult artist category, but hopefully we’re entering an era where this sort of breadth sees artists rewarded rather than marginalized.
“Spectre” is one of the LP’s standouts, in part for how it resists easy pigeonholing. I’ll just say it sounds like something a label like Warp or Astralwerks might’ve scooped up and dished onto a 12-inch in the early ’90s. From there, “Rahu Ketu” seamlessly splices P-Funk, Fania Records, and a New Orleans second line. And the title track introduces organ thickness that reminds me more of old school soap operas than Jimmy Smith, though the track does conclude with handclaps and a repeated playground-style chant where yellow gets rhymed with mellow.
With “Our People,” the aura of a New Orleans brass unit is even thicker (with The Roots also coming to mind), but in tandem with ’90s electronic rhythmic aspects and an ending that’s almost cosmic. Space is the place, y’know? It sets a proper stage for “Mercury Retrograde,” which dives back into the opener’s exploratory spillage for a rousing conclusion to the album.
Up top, I mentioned a variety of genres in relation to this set, to which many a jaded fuck might respond with a shrug and a frown if not a grunt of disdain. But if the ingredients at Emma-Jean Thackray’s command aren’t new, she’s combining them with freshness in a manner similar to assorted contempo hip-hop/ R&B/ jazz/ electronic fusioneers (most recently, Coltrane’s Phantasmagoria), so that the result isn’t an extended series of style cops but another significant step in music’s never-ending evolution. Yellow is an record wholly deserving of approbation.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
