While the world copies Beyonce who's copying Whitney who’s copying Aretha, the annoyingly named but sublimely gifted ALA.NI has breathed soulful new life into an unfashionable style of singing: artful, controlled and ludicrously expressive.

Sweaty, sleazy soul is a wonderful thing. Listen to Aretha Franklin's breakthrough work with the oily funk of the Muscle Shoals Band and I defy you not to squirm in your office chair with bodily delight. It's hot, it's scratchily humid, it's a sonic miracle.

But so many  bad copies have been made that the originals are at risk. So ALA.NI has stepped away from her career slinging harmonies for Mary J Blige and Blur and has revived an untrendy, stagey sound. She's the reincarnation of Deitrich, Day and Hepburn and it's sublime.

When she sings, every consonant is perfectly placed, an arch syncopation dotting the most everyday phrases. ALA.NI is capable of enunciating like a New England ice queen while stroking a note like Ella Fitzgerald. Her tales of loving manipulation and earnest cheating drip with rich contempt and aching defiance but the delivery is old-fashioned, controlled and haughty.

For a long time probably the least cool thing in entertainment has been to admit that you've been to stage school. Singing like you're in a musical is a no-no even if you're actually in one.

ALA.NI went to stage school and sings like she's the star of a 1950s revue. She preens over her notes, taking ostentatious time and care to get each one exactly right. There is no pretence here that this is unschooled emotion straight from the soul. She is giving a performance and giving in completely to the artifice, the fakery and the controlled theatricality of her craft.

ALA.NI's recorded music is pretty but samey. In a large arena or a stadium it might melt into a profitable sonic blancmange of Adele proportions. But in an embarrassingly poorly attended gig (I go to better-attended office meetings several times a week: she charmingly invites everyone to introduce themselves a couple of songs in. 'Hi, I'm Tom') with just a guitar for accompaniment it becomes magical. To be so close to someone who make such perfect sound is an almost-religious experience. Her large frame extends out beyond the stage, seemingly to touch us all. Her controlling confidence urges surrender to her charming sonic whims. Her every perfectly-annunciated, archly-crafted note marks her out as a master of the manipulation and uplifting delusion needed to carry an audience of strangers into your most intimate musings.

This is alchemy: the taking of slightly-samey retro folk and the conversion of it into something close to a cult. On another night in a bigger venue with rain dripping outside and a babysitter to rush home to maybe it would have been just good. In a near-empty King Tut's one Glasgow summer evening it was somewhere close to perfect.

http://www.ala.ni/ 

This review was published in The Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2016 

​Neil Young is still campaigning, still railing with passion if not precision at corporate threats to everything from farming to energy supplies to the quality of our audio files. But do the indulged passions of a 70 year old rock star make for a compelling show?

Thousands in Glasgow's Hydro thought so and paid devoted, roaring respect to a hero. Nonetheless, early signs were not good.

This tour promotes a protest album about agribusiness behemoth Monsanto which also carries a dig at Starbucks for good measure. As his young band joined him after a solo start, two figures in farming hats and denims walked across the stage spreading seeds while the big screen showed a picture of a daisy. A few songs later sinister figures in gleaming biohazard suits sprayed the ground in a decidedly evil manner. It was not subtle stuff.

Other indulgences were on display. Songs grew longer the later in the set they appeared. A fuzzy intro and a brief snatch of singing was typically followed by five minutes or more of leg-splayed posing and stomping to the squealing guitar wanderings of Young and his two guitarists, sons of his friend Willie Nelson.

Young has long been a noise merchant but the lack of fretboard discipline would shame a prog rocker or metal hero. Songs lasted ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes. Young has a distinctive soloing style and sound - it can be jagged, attack-filled and thrilling. But it can also be languid and meandering, and excitement fades as the minutes drift by.

As a celebration of the hypnotic power of repetitive, throbbing noise, Young's approach sometimes worked. The bone-shaking cadence of Love And Only Love - whose final winding-up was longer than most pop songs - felt like the grave pealing of distorted, doom-laden bells. The solemn repetition of single heavy notes was artful and moving, but the guitar histrionics produced too few of these moments.

A different Young had opened the concert. Alone behind piano or guitar he rattled through earlier, folkier hits like After The Gold Rush and Heart Of Gold. His voice had lost much of its power but had gained a wispy mournfulness. It was a moving contrast to the strident young man of the recordings, but the performances here felt rushed, something to get through to reach the noisy indulgence of the following two hours.