Come on feel the noise - Laura Mvula is back

I have, over the years, enjoyed many a happy evening in the Stravinsky Auditorium, the principle venue of the Montreux Jazz Festival. There was the encounter, in 2013, with Prince, a three-hour funkathon during which I was mostly crushed against the front of the stage, drenched in sweat and cramp-contorted like a figure in Picasso’s Guernica. But - man alive! - it was worth it. 

On another occasion, my mate Klaus and I found ourselves in the bar across the road, with Quincy Jones and his entourage floating about behind a roped off area (we weren’t), with George Benson sat at the end of the bar we were sat at. It felt like a stroll down Switzerland’s very own Stella Street, especially when Grace Jones came over, ominously, and merely asked if we were having a good time. Contrary to reputation, she was delightful. Only things like this happen in Montreux.

Another thing that happened was a magical night in a magical week of shows. In 2014 I went the whole hog and made the Jazz Festival my summer holiday, resulting in seeing Massive Attack, Everlast, Pharrel Williams, the Susan Tedeschi/Derek Trucks band, Buddy Guy and Robert Plant on different nights. In the midst of all that was a double-bill featuring Laura Mvula and everyone’s favourite hobbit-sized ivory-tinkler, Jamie Cullum. Mvula was, frankly, enchanting (Cullum was a blast, too). 

The summer of 2014 found Mvula in her ascendancy, having experienced her breakthrough the year before, during which she was copiously feted for her debut album Sing To The Moon. “Classically-trained former receptionist” was the media refrain, along with endless references to Amy Winehouse, Adele, Corinne Bailey Rae, Joss Stone, Mica Parris and the entire cabal of British female singers to take soul, jazz, nu-soul, nu-jazz and the like into the mainstream. Mvula, though, was anything but pedestrian that evening on the Swiss Riviera, performing with a small band comprising a harpist, her sister Dionne on violin, her brother James on cello, and Winehouse-veteran musical director Troy Miller on drums. And it was sublime. Mvula’s sophomore release, The Dreaming Room, garnered acclaim equal to its predecessor but then, at the beginning of 2017, she was abruptly dropped by Sony Music, something communicated to her in a seven-line email. Ever since, she has laid relatively low, but clearly not allowing her prodigious talent to be diminished or even extinguished. 

I say laid low, but that period did include supporting David Byrne on his American Utopia tour, a “pivotal” experience that invigorated her world view. The former Talking Head’s shows were, she says, like black church spiritual gatherings in terms of how audiences responded. It was, Mvula says, liberating and euphoric, and all the result of rhythm and movement. Because her support slot was stripped down - just her and Miller - she found herself generating noise with synths, seeding in the process the album she’s just released - Pink Noise.

Now signed to the legendary home of soul music, Atlantic Records, it’s a full-on dancefest that dares to abandon the dreamy orchestration of her first two releases, instead tapping into the R’n’B vibe of 1980s pop. Thus, you will hear in the mix the ghost of the aforementioned Prince (who, coincidentally, was a noted fan) or the rhythmic signatures of producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. If ever there was an example of dancing away your blues, then, Pink Noise is a clear catharsis. Her sudden departure from Sony clearly still wrankles, although she admitted to The Times recently that she had to bite her lip: “Plain speaking in this line of work can be tricky,” she told Dan Cairns. “Everyone else was getting angry on my behalf, but it seemed as if it was dodgy if I voiced it. An angry black woman? That’s a no-no. You know, let’s not go there, please, nobody wants that — that’s what it felt like. So to hear myself speak about it in these songs felt amazing.”

Thus, a sense of liberation runs through the entire album, though liberation from what is up for debate. Mvula’s upbringing in a conservative Christian family in Birmingham might be seeping through in the line “How can you dance with the devil on your back?” on the lead single, Church Girl, but it is probably, in reality, more of the dancing queen in her breaking out. Clearly, in her own explanation of the direction Pink Noise takes, she’s looking to let the real Laura Mvula out. While the album overall is a colourful riot of rhythm, with electronic drums and synth bass infectiously parping away, there are shades of light and space, too. But for the most part, it’s an enjoyable return to quintessential ’80s pop, as if you’ve come in from the pub on a Friday night and found a vintage edition of Top Of The Pops on BBC Four, all party streamers and ra-ra skirts, and Janet Jackson or even Prince himself in their prime. In fact, name an ’80s chart reference point, and if you were alive then, Mvula brings it all come flooding back. Even Phil Collins doing Sussudio.

When she was thinking about a return to recording, Mvula sought the advice her people. “The best thing my manager said to me was, ‘What do you want to make?’,” she told The Times. “I said, ‘Something I can move to.’ ” And that is exactly what she did.

Pink Noise is out now on Atlantic Records