Jesse Morgan is nothing if not versatile. With his previous single, Here We Stand, the drive behind his expansive and soulful voice comes from a more rock environment with guitars providing chiming motifs or explosive energy. Give Me Faith, however, has a more R&B feel to it, a pop sense and a soul heart. The former is also more of a shout it from the rooftops anthem whereas this time around the song feels more like a one on one conversation, an intimate confessional, a personal message but with universal resonance.
As always harmony is high on the list of boxes to be ticked, close multiple harmonies hang on his every world building in passion and power as the song heads towards it’s crescendo; pianos build, strings sweep forward and the song becomes as vocally intricate as it does musically hypnotic.
Jesse Morgan is the epitome of the modern gospel singer, obviously the message is the driving point, the whole reason he is performing but the skill is also to move with the times. Here, he wonderfully acknowledges the musical traditions of his chosen genre but the fact that he is so able to weave them through contemporary pop, soul and dance vibes keeps them musically relevant as well as lyrically poignant. Never has a message been so wonderfully wrapped.
Available on iTunes: http://bit.ly/GiveMeFaithiTunes
There was a point a few songs in to The Collection, possibly somewhere around Always You that I recognised the same battered style and ragged glory of one of my favourite musical cult heroes, Nikki Sudden. In my book, it doesn’t get better than that. The same loose and slightly louche approach, the same street gutter observations, the backstreet mythologies being woven, the broken guitar-slinging poet. And that is the thing I am finding that I love about 
We are not normally that big on straight out covers here at Dancing About Architecture, but there were a number of reasons, musical and otherwise, why we wanted to give this cheeky little release some room. Firstly the lead track is recently reunited heroes Tex Pistols take on Kirsty McColl’s sublime wonky pop classic There’s A Guy Work’s Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis and anything which reminds us of that lovely lady and her music is always going to get our vote. Here it is rendered into a twangy Cajun-country groove and it works brilliantly.
Playing a note on a guitar or singing a lyrical line is a fairly straightforward job. These days it seems as if you could blindly throw a stone and not fail to hit some over-entitled, gap-year troubadour treating us to his accumulated life experience since leaving home six months previous. Thankfully people like Chris Tye understand that it is all about getting just the right note, the most effective chord, the resonant lyric, anything else is just getting in the way.
There are many perks of being in a band, one of the less obvious ones is being perfectly equipped to pay tribute to your musical heroes, those who shaped your formative years and who may have even been the reason for you taking up musical arms in the first place. Fassine are no strangers to the idea of paying tribute your heroes, their cover of XTC’s 
It isn’t often that you stick an album on only to find track one being a cross between an advert for the music to follow, an admonishment of the listener about the cultural effects of not paying for music and a musing about the availability of prescription drugs. Once that sinks in it is difficult to imagine what is going to follow, but you are certainly thinking that is not going to conform to the usual musical templates. And you’d right….sort of.
Things I like: Strange dystopian fantasy. Dream-pop. New music coming at me from unexpected places. Strong and emotive female vocals. Narrative videos (even if I’m not sure what they really mean it beats a dance routine or a performance any day of the week.) Lists.
As the title of the album suggests, Pratfalls and Curtain Calls is autobiographical in nature, an artist reflecting on the world around him in all it’s honest and gritty glory, its intimacy and loneliness, its ultimate highs, its desolate lows, love, loss, life and everything in between. But then the stage as a soapbox and the recorded medium as mass communication provide the ideal way of presenting your take on the world around you. Quite frankly anyone not taking such an opportunity to add something thoughtful to the collective discussion is really missing an opportunity. Not here though.
