Some minor keys delicately played on the piano provide a hauntingly sparse backdrop for McFarlane’s slightly spooked-sounding voice at the start of ‘More than Mine’, the first track on ‘Until Tomorrow’. And then the brass breaks loose, spreading discord and dislocation. It’s powerful stuff, and perhaps the last thing I’d expected from an album that positions itself between the realms of modern jazz and nu-soul. I mean, if here’s one thing I loathe more than jazz, it’s modern jazz, and if there’s one thing I loathe even more than jazz, it’s soul, and... you get the idea. I was fully expecting to hate every second of this and to have frisbeed the CD out of the window a song and a half in.
It’s a pity that ‘Captured (Part 3)’ which immediately follows, sees Zara slip into the musical equivalent of the generic little black dress, a laid-back smoky modern jazz number with a bit of swing and bare shoulder but no real oomph or emotion. The slide continues on ‘Mama Done’, a self-absorbed piano-led bee-bap-de-la-bap muso effort with a shuffling rhythm, and the title track is a perfectly adequate but entirely forgettable slice of late-night bar crooning that does nothing to convince me that it’s worth sticking around.
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By the time of ‘Blossom Tree’, I’m seriously contemplating pressing the eject and dispensing the disc into the neighbour’s back yard. Some would call it sultry, with its laid-back sax break and slick, smoky delivery, but I just find it impossible to engage with.
The vocal aerobatics on ‘Feed the Spirit (The Children & The Warlock)’ are the clincher. It’s all too much: I tried, but I have my limits.
Zara McFarlane Online
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