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As widely mentioned here in the last few weeks, I went to Suresnes last night to hear Jean-Jacques Milteau and his acolytes from the Soul Conversation project. I hadn't seen Milteau live in a good old while, and never with these guys. I received the album JJ Milteau and Soul Conversation a few weeks ago so this is an opportunity to review both the new material (as displayed in the record) and the live performance.
The line-up last night was as minimal as can be since JJ came up on stage with Manu Galvin on guitar as sole accompanyist and singers Ron Smyth and Michael Robinson. While the CD features bass and drums on most titles in addition to the above team, this really is the core engine, and as the concert last night beautifully demonstrated, it works just fine. In fact, if anything, the sparseness of the backing highlights the magnificant voices of Ron and Michael, making them the center of attention.
And that, I believe, is the whole point about this project. I'm starting to think JJ is a singer without the voice who sings through his harp but likes nothing better than surround himself with singers whose voices really shine. If that makes sense. In fact, his choice of singers (occasional or recurrent) for the last three or four albums seem to support that theory.
The repertoire last night was mostly songs from the latest album, with a few exceptions (Chronoblues, Blues Hop, Why are people like that? are the three I spotted.) This means that although the blues is never far away, this was really a soul concert (if by soul you mean the stuff Stax was doing in the 60s, not the industrialised stuff they call soul these days...)
JJ opened solo with Chronoblues (from ... merci d'être venu) to set the atmosphere, and then the band joined and launched into a lively Rock n' Roll will never die, also the album vocal opener. Some of the highlights for me were Will you come, a very moving song about Martin Luther King, Why are people like that, which I've loved every since I heard the Junior Wells version on Come on in this House and You can't always get what you want which, strangely, didn't do much for me on record but was an absolutely superb first encore live... Go figure!
One thing I need to tell you is that I took my wife and kids to the concert. Probably, my enjoyment was magnified by seeing my kids smiling big banana smiles as soon as that song started. That being said, there really was a special atmosphere last night, even though it wasn't exactly joyous overall. This latest album is mostly deep and somewhat sad songs, and there was very little (in fact, none) of the JJ & Manu jokes going on. I hadn't paid too much attention to the lyrics of the songs composed for the album, but live they really strike you. On Is This the Way?, Ron Smyth sings:
Not exactly laughing material. Still, as JJ mentioned repeatedly, soul music was and is about hope, and a lot of the material examplified that too. Of course, the edge of the blues is somewhat sanded by the beautiful vocal harmonies that Ron, Michael and Manu lay on many of the songs. But this doesn't make the music any less poignant, just a little less exhilerating.
Still, JJ knows his stuff and while his playing was, on the whole, extremely sober, with simple backing and/or melodic lines, superbly laid with a very controlled sound, he did let things rip two or three times in the evening, to great effect. I remember when I first interviewed him back in 1999 he told me "If you sound like a chainsaw for one or two solos, people love it. For the whole show, they doze off..." He certainly demonstrates that point!
If I had one minor gripe about the concert it was that a lot of the material being slow and delicate stuff, there was a section in the middle where the songs started to blend into each other a little bit. It didn't last long, and the encores really energised the audience again, but the setlist could have done with a couple of more uptempo pieces in the middle.
All in all, a great concert, and a very interesting album. It's quite in line with what JJ has been doing these last few years, the zen harmonica playing that exemplifies his approach these days. Milteau is one of those guys who can, but often doesn't. And that's what music is all about. Keep on going, JJ!
(For those of you in Paris, JJ and his Soul Conversation Quartet is in residence for 14 concerts at the Sunset Jazz Club starting this Saturday)
