Aria @ Pizza Express Live Soho, London - Sept. 21

Aria (lead vocals); Poppy Daniels (trumpet); Bella Band (flute); Will Hobson (piano); Chris Montague (guitar); Harry Gould (bass); Dan Hester (drums); Elisha Zion, Siobhan Naomi Prince, Lauren Fretwell (backing vocals)

Three years ago, Aria sang at Pizza Express Live Soho before she had written a song of her own. Tonight, she returned to the same compact stage with a debut album, a full house and a nine-piece band packed around her.

 

That is quite a way to come full circle.

 

But this was more than a neat piece of symmetry. From the moment she walked on for Resentment, Aria looked entirely at home: assured at the centre of a formidable band, comfortable with the room and ready to claim the occasion rather than simply mark it.

 

The album is Rectify, released on Sarah Gillespie’s Pastiche Records, and Gillespie’s fingerprints are understandably all over the journey that brought Aria here. Mentor, manager, producer, co-writer, friend and, as Aria described her from the stage, sounding board, Gillespie has clearly played an enormous part in developing the artist we saw tonight.

 

And what a band Aria had assembled around her.

 

Chris Montague on guitar, Will Hobson at the piano, Harry Gould on bass and Dan Hester on drums formed a formidable core, joined by Poppy Daniels on trumpet and Bella Band on flute. Then there were Elisha Zion, Siobhan Naomi Prince and Lauren Fretwell – three backing singers who were anything but background decoration.

 

In fact, they were one of the joys of the evening.

 

Three female backing voices gave the music a richness that you simply don’t get from a stripped-back soul band. Sometimes they sat behind Aria like a warm cushion of sound; elsewhere they answered her, pushed her and lifted a chorus just when it needed it. There were moments when those voices combined with Aria’s and the whole room seemed to expand.

And remember, this is Pizza Express Live.

 

It isn’t a vast stage. Somehow they managed to get everyone on there, and rather than making the music feel crowded, the proximity added to the excitement. Horns, voices, guitar, piano and rhythm section were almost piled on top of one another, yet the sound had space to breathe.

 

 

Poppy Daniels was particularly effective. Trumpet can easily become an embellishment in this sort of setting – something added for colour – but Daniels became part of the personality of the arrangements. Her interjections gave the songs another edge, sometimes sharp and punchy, sometimes warmer and more soulful, while Bella Band’s flute brought a contrasting lightness.

 

And then there was Chris Montague.

 

Montague is the sort of guitarist who doesn’t need to spend the evening reminding you how good he is. You simply keep noticing him. A phrase here, a chord there, a little rhythmic push underneath Aria’s vocal – and then suddenly he steps forward and changes the temperature of the room completely.

 

Opening with Resentment immediately established the territory. This is contemporary soul with jazz running through its bloodstream rather than music desperately trying to decide which box it belongs in. There was groove, attitude and a wonderfully full sound, with Aria already looking remarkably relaxed.

 

Angel followed before Kiss Me exposed another side of her writing. Much of Rectify deals with relationships – wanting them, losing them, questioning them and occasionally wanting to throttle them – but beneath all of that youthful emotional turbulence there is an honesty that makes these songs work.

 

Then came Only Time I Get, one of the night’s most tender moments.

Its dreamlike longing gave Hobson space at the piano and allowed Aria to pull everything back, but it was Bella Band’s flute that added some of the most beautiful colour. Expansive and accomplished, it floated above the arrangement rather than crowding it, weaving around Aria’s vocal and giving the song an almost weightless quality. It was one of those touches that could easily have been merely decorative; instead, it became part of the emotion of the song.

 

It demonstrated something important about Aria too: she doesn’t always need to belt a song into submission. There is vulnerability in her voice, and when she trusts it, it can be extremely effective.

 

The set moved easily between Aria’s own material and music that has helped shape her. Lover Mine was followed by Cole Porter’s Do I Love You? transformed into something considerably more contemporary.

 

Aria introduced it by acknowledging that they were, after all, standing in an iconic jazz club, before promptly turning the standard into something neo-soul, soulful and unmistakably hers.

 

I liked that.

 

Because it summed up much of the evening.

 

Pizza Express Jazz Club has hosted just about every shade of jazz imaginable, but Aria brought something different into that Soho basement. Neo-soul, R&B, jazz, gospel harmonies and contemporary song writing all rubbed shoulders without anyone appearing particularly concerned about where one genre ended and another began.

 

It gave the old room a different energy.

 

Coma Cupid, co-written with Gillespie, Shaaba Lotun and Montague, pushed things further towards the contemporary end of the spectrum. Its hook and rhythmic pulse suited Aria particularly well, with the band really beginning to stretch behind her.

 

Then came Belong, carrying considerably more emotional weight. Aria doesn’t hide much in these songs. Love, uncertainty, frustration, desire and vulnerability are laid out for everyone to inspect, and the more personal the material became, the more convincing she sounded.

 

The title track, Rectify Your Soul, carries particular significance. This was the song that started the recording journey and, live, it had considerably more muscle. Gould and Hester locked into the groove while trumpet, flute and those three voices widened the arrangement until the little Pizza Express stage sounded considerably bigger than it looked.

 

The second half also revealed Aria’s musical DNA.

 

Erykah Badu’s I Want You was an obvious fit, while Lauryn Hill’s Ex-Factor gave the band room to dig deeper. These weren’t random covers dropped into the set for familiarity. Badu, Hill and later Jill Scott provided a musical map of where much of Aria’s own language has come from.

 

Her rendition of Édith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose provided perhaps the evening’s most touching full-circle moment.

 

Aria had sung the song at Sarah Gillespie’s Create Now Academy showcase in this very club before she had written a song of her own.

Think about that for a moment.

 

The young singer who had once stood on this stage with no songs to call her own was now back in the same room, launching an album full of them.

That’s quite a journey in three years.

 

Bonnie Raitt’s Something To Talk About, the album’s closing track, might appear an unusual choice on paper, but live it made complete sense. The arrangement had swagger, the backing vocals added another layer of soul and Aria attacked it with obvious enjoyment.

 

Jill Scott’s Gettin’ In The Way was equally revealing. Aria clearly loves this music. You could see it in the way she moved and hear it in the phrasing. There is still plenty of room for her own musical identity to develop, but these influences are increasingly becoming ingredients rather than impersonations.

 

That is an important distinction.

 

It’s All Your Fault brought us firmly back into Aria’s own world. There is bite in this song – frustration delivered with a smile and enough rhythmic punch to make the accusation rather enjoyable.

 

It also demonstrated just how far her stagecraft has come.

 

By this point she wasn’t merely singing songs. She was working the room, talking to the audience, enjoying her musicians and allowing the natural exuberance of the music to take over.

 

Pizza Express was completely with her.

 

And then Home To You.

 

Introducing the song, Aria spoke about music being the place she comes home to when everything else in life is happening around her.

 

You believed her.

 

Because by this point she had spent the evening demonstrating exactly that.

 

There is something rather wonderful about seeing a young artist standing on the same stage where, three years earlier, she had arrived with almost no original material, now fronting a nine-piece band and launching an album carrying songs she helped create.

 

Sarah Gillespie deserves considerable credit for recognising something early and helping nurture it. So too do the exceptional musicians surrounding Aria.

 

But eventually an artist has to walk out from underneath all that support and own the stage herself.

 

Tonight, Aria did.

 

Rectify may be her debut album, but this didn’t feel like the beginning of an experiment.

 

It felt like the apprenticeship was ending.

 

And as Aria stood there surrounded by a terrific band, three wonderful backing voices and a full Pizza Express crowd that clearly didn’t want the evening to end, there was another thought that seemed rather appropriate.

 

For an album called Rectify, quite a lot suddenly felt very right. Glenn Wright