Acclaimed 80s icon Sarah Jane Morris releases new album on International Women's Day
SARAH JANE MORRIS
RETURNS WITH NEW ALBUM
‘THE SISTERHOOD’
OUT MARCH 8th 2024
On International Women’s Day (March 8th 2024) the unique British soul, jazz and R&B singer-songwriter Sarah Jane Morris returns with her most joyously life-affirming album yet – ‘The Sisterhood.’
A representation of Sarah Jane's roots, inspirations, and indefatigable love of contemporary music-making and its iconic pioneers ‘The Sisterhood’ celebrates ten female stars who dominated the singing and songwriting of the 20th century - Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox, and Kate Bush.
“For more than twenty years I have been thinking about projects to celebrate women and our contribution to the history of song. This, at last, is it,” says Sarah Jane. “These are my ten singers, my essential lodestars. With these stories I tell my own, acknowledge my musical tutelage and identify the women who mean so much to me. This album is dedicated to all my musical sisters, to those who went before and to those still making music. Thank you for blazing the trail, for fighting for us all with your irresistible talent and your passionate resolve.”
‘The Sisterhood’ is Sarah Jane’s ‘lock-down project’, as she and her husband Mark worked on the lyrical structures through months of isolation. As the repertoire came together, Sarah Jane and Tony Rémy, her co-writer/co-producer of the project, became convinced that the grooves and moods of the songs needed to sound contemporary yet reflective of the styles that had guided the ears and choices of the original artists in their own times. They also knew that the pandemic had hollowed out their earnings, and that this supremely ambitious project would have to be funded with little more than ingenuity and hope.
With the lyrics to the ten songs completed, and the music and arrangements crafted by Sarah Jane and Tony Rémy, Sarah Jane set up residential song-writing and creative visual art weekends at home in Sussex to help the cause. A trip to South Africa (to record the album's Miriam Makeba tribute with the Soweto Gospel Choir) was made possible with help and accommodation from Dali Tambo, a friend of Sarah Jane's since Artists Against Apartheid was founded in the UK by Tambo and The Specials' Jerry Dammers in the mid-1980s.
How successfully they realised the elusive ambition of a contemporary set that remains rooted in the legacies of the artists it celebrates, is evident all over this remarkable album. The title track is an infectiously funky salutation to Aretha Franklin, with the groove and vocal snap of a dancefloor anthem, yet steeped in the classic gospel sound that Sarah Jane Morris seems to have absorbed into her DNA. Junk In My Trunk, for Billie Holiday, is a deceptively ethereal soul-jazz homage to Holiday's determination to stand by the harrowing anti-racist message of 'Strange Fruit' in the face of ruthless censorious pressure from the authorities, Couldn't Be Without is a springy, horn-pumping eulogy for Bessie Smith, that towering precursor and influence for so many female artists – complete with the price she paid.
Tomorrow Never Happens urgently unfolds the story of how Janis Joplin threw fuel on the fire beneath the intimate relationship of blues and rock and roll, while the lyrical, romantic For The Voiceless is a graceful thanksgiving for the music and empathy of Annie Lennox. The delicate Rimbaud of Suburbia enchantingly connects the dreamworld of Kate Bush's 'The Man with the Child In His Eyes' to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud - Bush having written the song when she was 13, Rimbaud creating his entire surreal literary legacy before he was 20.
Then there’s Sarah Jane's Rickie Lee Jones and Joni Mitchell tributes - Jazz Side of the Road and Sing Me A Picture - exquisitely capturing the fragile perceptiveness and old-soul wisdoms of those two complex women. Miss Makeba first pays solemn spoken-word respect to South Africa's anti-apartheid revolution, before an Afrobeat guitar chime develops a deep, humming anthem. So Much Love (for Nina Simone) - opening in spacey whispers and becoming a cruising soul-ballad groove - is both a warm celebration of the compassionate universality of music-making its subject would have dreamed of in her youth, and a candid recognition of the experiences of racism and greed that fuelled Simone's defiant and scalding seriousness as she extended the reach of popular song.
Sarah Jane Morris has been one of Britain’s great song interpreters since first finding fame in the 80s with bands like The Republic, Happy End and The Communards, singing on their chart-topping hit ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way.’ Since then she’s released 15 solo albums winning acclaim for her octave-vaulting contralto range which stretches from sonorous, reverberating low tones to a searingly soulful falsetto. Adding to her sweeping vocal palette she has developed an original lyricist's expressiveness fuelled by a profound grasp of popular musical history. Stirred into that is an unflinching personal-political drive that has made social and sexual liberation and human rights issues the life-blood of many of her songs.
Over the past decade, those elements have coalesced in increasingly evocative ways - on landmark Morris projects including 2014's Africa-dedicated Bloody Rain, 2016's joyfully conversational Compared to What with guitarist Antonio Forcione, and the delicate and beautifully-arranged Sweet Little Mystery, a haunting valediction for Scottish avant-folk genius John Martyn, forged with guitarist and long-time collaborator Tony Rémy.
'The Sisterhood' is a labour of love - a hard-won new triumph in an already prolific life at the cutting edge of contemporary music-making. Sarah Jane has stepped up to another creative level to create a richly referential, highly complex and strikingly original collection, clarifying the story of women in popular song. “It’s the best project I’ve ever been part of” says Sarah Jane with the passionate felicity of the true artist to the latest incarnation of her creativity. She describes her conviction simply: “It’s the passing of the torch from sister to sister”. Amen to that.
CATCH SARAH JANE MORRIS PERFORMING ‘THE SISTERHOOD’ LIVE:
Friday 8th March – The Tung Auditorium, Liverpool – TICKETS
Saturday 9th March – Alexandra Palace Theatre, London – TICKETS
