The first thing that gets you is the voice, immediately the voice. It is smooth and sensual, the voice, sexy even, and so very self-assured. He’s already comfortably established himself, his first album ‘New Vintage’ having debuted at number eight last year – sold over 100,000 copies – but now he is ready for the next stage.
And so now comes the new album ‘Traditional’ in which, if anything, his voice has come on even more, but it’s the new ones that will really come to define him. Take the infectious lead-off single ‘Traditional’ which, for a jazz number, is anything but; its lyrical thrust slyly suggesting, “The most you expect is a sex in a text/Non-stop hip-hop, all-night love shops”, in a manner that takes the genre by the horns and brings it abruptly into 2007, so very youthful and alive.
Another track ‘You’re Worth It’, shuffles with a predatory menace and concerns what one man will do go get, and keep his girl, while a treatment of Nancy Wilson’s ‘How Glad I Am’ is absolutely beguiling and features the striking vocals of Belle Erskine. And in between the grooves and funks comes, a new song ‘September’ which Grant delivers with the poise and understatement of someone who understands that, sometimes, less is more.
As Grant will tell you himself, this is “a really contemporary record. There are some great grooves here, and a lot of natural funk. What I’ve tried to do with this album is cross the classic sound of easy listening and jazz with a much younger edge.”
Although only 20 years old, Grant prompts within the listener much the same reaction they had upon first hearing, say, Jamie Cullum, or even his own personal hero Harry Connick Jr. His attention to detail has paid off, and rather grandly too, for Grant is now fully the real deal, delivering his songs with the poise and understatement of someone who understands that, sometimes, less is more.
“I feel it’s a great time for music like this right now,” he says. “Look at Jamie Cullum, Michael Buble, Amy Winehouse. Jazz for me is everything, it’s my whole life, and like those artists, I want to help make it fresh and relevant, exciting and new.”
Track List
Traditional
That’s Life
Until You Come Back
You’re Worth It
This Guy’s In Love
On The Beach
How Glad I Am
On And On
Edge Of Blue
Let The Good Times Roll
Never To Far Away From A Song
September Song
