The Funky Astronaut reports the band reached #7 in the country!
REVIEW: Jersey Street 'Love Rising Up'
Macedonia’s The Funky Astronaut writes, “a great jazz album by a band from Manchester.”
We are witnessing that in the second half of the previous decade the British jazz scene experienced a real explosion, jazz went into the “mainstream” on the one hand, and Shabaka Hutchings, Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, Joe Armon-Jones became rock stars. Despite this jazz revolution, most bands have remained under the radar of a wider audience, fortunately the "underground" label on their backs does not bother them in their desire to create great music.
One such band is certainly Jersey Street, a band from Manchester founded at the end of the last decade of the previous century, whose work in that period could be subsumed under electronic music, to be transformed from a "house" band through a transitional electro soul period into a real organic jazz band reminiscent in style of “The Brand New Heavies”. Last night I had the privilege of listening to their as yet unreleased album "Love Rising Up" which seems to me to be the final metamorphosis of the band where they made a complete departure from "dance" music and created an achievement for which they found inspiration in the works of Roy Ayers and Betty Davis.
Almost the entire album is characterized by an accentuated string section that gives the song "Love Will Be Our Guide" an almost Philly soul / disco touch, while the song "Carnival" gives a retro "cinematic" charm. "The Way We Are" is a "dancefloor" jazz-funk song carried by the horn section, while the flute in the last third of the song gives it a special flair. However, in my humble opinion, the most impressive songs are those in the jazz style, "Nightingale", "Love Rising Up", and especially "No One Can Take Your Place", which, it seems to me, carries a special emotion, in which singer Dawn Zee it simply shines, while the drums are a story unto themselves. “Love Rising Up” is sure to be a treat for all jazz fans and one of the “must have” albums of 2020. To remind you, the album will be released on September 25 and will be released by the record company "Ubuntu Music".