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David Mcalmont
David's set opens with his own twist on the familiar song 'Night and Day'. As he himself says , this gentle set really is music to ease your hang over. In quite a fragile state myself, it's easy to relax to the soft sounds of symbols or the gentle pulses of the double bass. Frank Sinatra's 'Under my Skin' sounds fantastic on the acoustic guitar with such a contrast in vocals from David. Perfect the-morning-after music.Clare Rixon on David McAlmont at The Big Chill 2006
David McAlmont - A profile
You take a classic song and a great voice - and, as David McAlmont says, when you put the two together you can't really go wrong.
McAlmont has long had the voice. From his hits with Bernard Butler through his acclaimed solo releases to his collaborations with the likes of David Arnold and Craig Armstrong, his unique voice with its multi-octave range has adorned and enriched British music for a decade and more.
In the old cliché David McAlmont could sing the phone book and make it sound good. But a great singer deserves great songs - hence Set One: You Go To My Head, a glorious collection of classics and standards that provides a timeless vehicle for his thrilling voice.
They include songs by Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen made famous by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Great songs such as You Go To My Head, Under My Skin, Night and Day and One For My Baby, all carefully hand-picked by David for their emotional resonance. "With each song I sat down and said why I am doing this, how does it relate to me and can I find a connection with it," he explains. "I didn't want to sing anything I didn't feel."
Set One: You Go To My Head is the most satisfying chapter yet in a career that has already achieved much and established David McAlmont as one of the finest singers of his generation. Born in Croydon in 1967, at the age of 11 he moved with his mother to Guyana, where he started singing in church. He returned to Britain in 1987, paid the rent by mopping floors - and came out. Wondering what to do with his remarkable voice, he answered an ad in Melody Maker, which led to his teaming up with Saul Freeman in Thieves. The duo's first single Through The Door was released in 1992, but after one more release they split.
What had been intended to be Thieves' first album was released on Hut Records under the title McAlmont in 1994. That same year, he hooked up with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler and the pair charted with the hit singles Yes and You Do. A collaboration with David Arnold put him back in the charts in 1997 with Diamonds Are Forever and his ambitious solo album A Little Communication appeared the following year.
After parting company with Hut, the follow-up album Be was frustratingly shelved, meaning it was four years before we heard from David McAlmont again, when he reunited with Bernard Butler for the 2002 album Bring It Back. Then they went their separate ways again, Butler to reunite with former Suede colleague Brett Anderson and McAlmont to start planning a series of albums or 'sets' of some of the most enduring songs in the history of popular music.
Now comes the eagerly-awaited first instalment. Yet what he's created with Set One is far more than simply a collection of his favourite covers. "I thought it would be nice to theme each album differently and this one is called You Go To My Head because lyrically the songs are all about the philosophy of love and its hopelessness and losing yourself in that emotional experience,'' he explains.
For someone who has always been a songwriter, to immerse himself in the lyrics of others offered a challenge. "I think I had to get over that syndrome that's been prevalent ever since the Beatles that says because you're a singer you have to be a writer as well. But I really wanted some time off from songwriting," he says candidly.
"I've written about so many different things and I really didn't know what else to write about. So I had the idea of going back to the masters of the craft to get some inspiration and learn a thing or two about great songwriting before I start writing again. I'm not in a hurry to write anything right now. I realised what a singer needs is a song - and there are so many great ones that have been written already."
He began by compiling a list of around 70 of them, mostly songs he had grown up with. "My mother collected this kind of music and when I was very young I was in love with it," he recalls. "Then as I got older stuff like Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire and later Prince became more important to me."
Over the years he's dutifully sent his mother all the albums he's made but admits she hasn't really been a fan of any of them. "She kept reminding me that I used to sing these standards when I was a child and she was always urging me to record them," he recalls. "It felt natural and I always thought I'd do it one day. But I felt I needed to get some experience and learn more about the craft of singing before I tackled such great songs. If I'd done it 15 years ago I'd have probably done them in a very traditional way. But I think the different musical styles I've worked in since has allowed me to take a quite different approach."
As part of his research for the album, he bought piles of old recordings from what he calls 'the golden age' in order 'to hear how it was done'. As he did so, many of the songs he had known from childhood on his original list were superseded by new discoveries. How Long Has This Been Going On he found on Judy Garland Live at Carnegie. Under My Skin and One For My Baby came from Sinatra At The Sands. Rodgers and Hart's My Romance and Harold Arlen's Blues In The Night were found on Ella Fitzgerald's 'songbook' albums.
Then stylistically, Betty Carter and Cassandra Wilson were influences. Artists who have the happy knack of taking well-known songs and making them sound fresh and new. "All the great productions and arrangements of these songs have been done," David reasons. "But it dawned on me that you can have ten different singers doing ten different versions of these standards if the basic nature and integrity of the song remains intact. If you can sing and you've got decent musicians, it's hard to screw them up. So I wanted to create a kind of understatement that allows the innate perfection of the songs to be heard and puts its faith in the melody."
To do so he assembled a small band around pianist Guy Davis (who co-produced his 1998 solo album A Little Communication), Andy Gangadene from the Bays on drums and Neville Malcolm on bass. "People have sometimes complained that my voice gets crowded out and this record is for them," he says. "I wanted to introduce some space into what I do and these musicians enabled me to do that."
He already has a theme for Set Two, which he will begin recording later this year, and believes he is now in the most satisfying place in his musical career to date. "I think in the past I was a bit naïve and a bit of a drifter. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do musically. Now I've found the sound I want and I'm making music for those people who enjoy my voice. And as I keep saying, with songs like these, you can't really fail."
Written: 14th Jul, 06
Read: 3389 times
