Breaking away --- Jaki Graham -- 1986 (EMI)
You could go through my album, CD or digital music collection and probably not come across another soul or disco album --- unless you count Tina Turner --- but this album for some reason made its way onto my record shelf back in the eighties. Maybe it was that I was on the radio with a late-night show at the time, and her single, which was also the title track, was in the charts. This album I do remember getting cheap, so cheaply in fact that it made sense to buy it on the assumption other singles would be released from it (they were) and as I recall although it didn't make me a fan of Jaki Graham or have me heading down to my local disco, it surprised me as being not totally crap. I haven't listened to it since the radio station closed down, and I do wonder now if I will still feel the same about it, a quarter of a century later?
Before we get into the actual music though, I must point out that it's almost not a Jaki Graham album, as the pawmarks of Derek Bramble are all over it. I originally believed him to be married to Graham, but I see now I am incorrect: she's married all right but to someone else. In that case I don't know why he has such an overbearing presence on the album, but he writes almost every song, produces, arranges, engineers the album and plays guitar and keyboards as well as providing backing vocals. Oh, and he arranges the strings and programmes the drum machines too. Bloody Hell! As I say, it's only short of having his name on the cover instead of hers! Talk about creative control being taken out of your hands. But then, as I mentioned, I don't know the background behind these two, and maybe he was and is a great friend of Graham's and was helping her out. Or maybe he's just huge in disco/soul circles and she was glad to have his input. I really don't know, but if you look at the back of the album and count the number of times Derek Bramble's name appears, well, it's a lot is all I'll say.
So what about Jaki then? Can she sing? Well yes she can, and right from the start she shouts then sings the title of the opener, the perhaps appropriate "Set me free". It's got that upbeat brass so typical of soul records of the late eighties, with good backing vocals and digital piano with funky guitar and bass, and it bops along nicely. Stabs of sharp synth are added throughout the melody, again another thing common in music of this genre at the time. It's not the worst start to an album though it's really not my kind of music. Good sax solo halfway through from --- well, I don't know: there are three or four guys credit with "brass" in the liner notes, so I couldn't tell you who is responsible for the sax, but he's pretty good. The song itself is, not surprisingly, a little repetitive: I always found disco, soul and funk to be somewhat pedestrian in its structure, though the title track opens with a nice low sax and piano line before bright synth and much more upbeat and happy brass kicks the song up a few notches.
Graham has a great voice, of that there's no doubt; she's not of the school that believes you shout, roar or drag out every syllable
a la Mariah Carey, Whitney or Leona Lewis. She sings strongly but doesn't warp or twist her singing and it's quite pleasant to listen to. "Breaking away" is another uptempo song but slightly slower than the opener, with another fine sax break and some sort of samply synth work running through it. Again, you'd have to wonder: two tracks both with the theme of escape or getting away from something. Are we being given a message here? Or is that too deep for what is essentially a soul pop album? Whatever the case, "Still in love" has a beautiful strings opening, and if Derek Bramble is indeed responsible for their arrangement then he did a fine job. A happy, bubbly synth and some Rose Royce-style drum pads then takes the song in a semi-balladic direction, and Jaki's voice is clear and soft on the vocal. Nice backing vocals too, sprinklings of piano and keyboard running through the song like a meandering stream, with a really nice guitar solo in there, while "Love under moonlight", despite its ballad-like title, ramps up the tempo again.
Built on a solid little bassline, it reminds me of early Judie Tzuke in many ways, particularly "Sportscar" and "I am the phoenix", and is probably the funkiest of the tracks on the album up to this point. Nice to hear the guitar (yes, played by Bramble --- Derek Bramble appears by kind permission of Derek Bramble!) get its chance to shine and take the spotlight, and though it's relatively restrained it's a break from the synth-heavy material we've heard up to now. Nice blast of brass, which I admit could be sax or trumpet or even trombone: I'm not great with identifying brass instruments. I do remember not having much time for "Let's get blue", which returns to the digital piano melodies, with those drum pads again echoing and bursting out, this time with a male vocal duetting with Jaki. I think I remember it being credited as, you'll never guess, Derek Bramble, but I can't confirm this at the moment. I'd say it's him though. It's a fairly simple and banal song and I don't like it now any more than I did twenty-five years ago when I first heard it. It does have some Stevie Wonderesque harmonica, though I have a feeling it's synth-created.
"Luv 2 much" starts on a sort of electronic noise then jumps into an almost Art of Noise/Janet Jackson/Prince hybrid, with a staccato guitar, pulsing bass and running synth line. It came across to me then, and it still does now, as a poor ripoff of the sort of songs made popular by the likes of the Purple One and Michael's sister: it just doesn't sound like something I would have expected from Jaki Graham, given what I'd heard up to then. I think it was a shamless attempt to cash in, but don't think it worked. Lots of synthy trickery to try to pad out what is a pretty dull and ordinary song; just did nothing for me. The first of two songs on which Bramble collaborates with another songwriter, "The love of your life" is a good bit better. Maybe he needed someone to channel his creativity or just push him in another direction. Quite similar in ways to some of the material Phil Collins was putting out around that time, it has some nice peppy horns, a decent hook and a great vocal from Jaki, as well as some funky guitar from Bramble.
And he teams up with the great David Grant for "The closest one", which certainly has some punch in it, almost veering into rock territory on occasions. Big heavy powerful drums drive the rhythm and the synth line is frothy and sprightly, with good backing vocals from again Bramble, whose final songwriting effort, "Step right up", was the last single taken from the album, all four of which got into the UK top twenty. It's okay but nothing special: big honking synths and a snarly bass pull the song along in a marching dance rhythm, but it does feature one of Graham's most powerful and decisive vocal performances. The album then ends on what was the big hit single, and the only one not written by Derek Bramble. "Mated" features Grant again but not in terms of songwriting; he duets with Jaki on this song which became something of the signature of the album, even though of the four singles released this one was out before the album and reached the lowest chart position. It's a twee little love song but the voice of David Grant does add a lot to it. It has an almost boyband hook in the chorus, and you could certainly hear Westlife, One Direction or any of that lot singing it. It's the sort of song that doesn't have to be a duet, thought it does work better as one. For a closer I've heard worse, but I've also heard better.
TRACKLISTING
1. Set me free
2. Breaking away
3. Still in love
4. Love under moonlight
5. Let's get blue
6. Luv 2 much
7. The love of your life
8. The closest one
9. Step right up
10. Mated
I think when I was listening to this the first time I was trying to convince myself that I hadn't wasted my money, because only looking at it from the viewpoint of "Ah it's not
that bad!" makes this album worth listening to at all, certainly now in my almost fiftieth year. I wouldn't say it's a terrible album --- it certainly has a few okay tracks --- but it's not the sort of thing I would listen to of choice. Of course, as I said in the opening section I'm not a fan of this sort of music, so maybe I'm missing something really great about it. Some of you may enjoy it: some of you probably will enjoy it. But for me it's just a pretty generic pop/disco album that had I not needed to satisfy the endless requests of my three radio listeners back in the eighties I would never have considered buying.