At a time when the reheating of soul-music tropes is proving to be the key to Brit and Grammy award success, Curtis Harding feels welcomely authentic.
The Atlanta transplant has called the old-time sound of his debut, Soul Power, “sloppin’ soul” and tonight he dresses like someone utterly aware of his retro charm. Wearing a Princeton orange cardigan and shades, and sporting some well-kept sideburns, he could have easily stepped out of a scene from Mad Men about Greenwich Village bohemians. His talent, though, goes much deeper than surface level. Keep on Shining and Love Is All … are filled with an ecstatic rush of the familiar: warm Stax-ish brass, insistent choruses and fitful guitar lines straight out of Superfly. Even on a questionable choice of covers – Ain’t No Sunshine and California Dreamin’ (the latter with the addition of a dreaded bass solo) – the honeyed ease of his voice, reminiscent of Levi Stubbs, triumphs against its trite surroundings.
Things feel like they’re going to unravel when, midway through, Harding loses his cool with a drunk heckler complaining about the muddy sound quality. He aims a chant – “come fix the sound” – in her direction, and his bandmates look momentarily aghast. Thankfully, he pulls things back from the brink by jumping into the musically unexpected. The Drive is a cacophonous mix of TV on the Radio-esque robotic soul and My Bloody Valentine-lite feedback, while the grubby surf ska of No Pressure is thrilling – an arresting combination of Santigold and the B52s, it feels like a welcome kick up the archives. Best of the bunch, though, is Beautiful People. Its Wonderwall-ish rhythm is underpinned by a minor-key counter-melody played on the trumpet, while its lyrics (“You’ve got to stand up or die”) feel like a powerful polemic on the post-Ferguson landscape, giving Harding’s jukebox soul an edge of contemporary relevance.
