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David Jordan - 'Sun Goes Down'

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Fraser McAlpine | 10:40 UK time, Wednesday, 30 January 2008

David JordanThe signs are all around us, scattered across the nation's airwaves like crisps on the floor of a busy train. 2008 is going to be the year in which literally EVERYONE starts to encorporate elements of what used to be called 'world music' into their sound. We've already got Vampire Weekend's township jive and Gogol Bordello's klezmer-rock, Foals seem to be attempting to channel the spirit of the late great Fela Kuti on their new album, MIA is recording literally anyone doing anything musical at all on her travels around the world, and Freemasons have greatly improved a Kelly Rowland song by adding Turkish/Arabic twiddles to it.

And now there's this. A song which owes a little bit to musical theatre (can't you just picture jazz hands and leg-warmers in the chorus?), and a LOT to Eastern European folk ballads. Y'know, the sort of stuff that comes out of the Ukraine and is sadder and more mournful than any other form of music known to man, but is also very robust and hairy of chest, which only makes the melancholy bits sound even MORE sad.

And to make things sound even MORE 'effnick' David has welded his slavic choir to a similarly strident bluegrass stomp, almost as if to prove that these musical forms are often only separated by geography and local nuances (and y'know, language), rather than being the musical equivalent of attempting to mate a gorilla with an orange.

The result is startling. I mean, in a pop world which often values music which can demonstrate a clear pedigree, going back several generations, and leading back to the Beatles/Abba/Billie Holiday/NWA, what are we to make of a mongrel like this? I mean folk/world purists are going to hate the production sheen, pop fans are going to have a hard time with the Lloyd Webber-isms, and devotees of musical theatre will be wondering what TV talent show David Jordan escaped from, and wailing that they missed it...

Meanwhile, anyone who grew up enjoying the film Bugsy Malone - particularly that brilliant song where they raise an army of starving homeless 'men' from a soup kitchen, then get them to pelt gangsters with cream cakes (rather than, say, giving the homeless men the cream cakes to eat, and getting them to throw their soup, which would be a better deal, really), will find that this song provides welcome relief from any endlessly formulaic music - be it pop, rock, indie or R&B.

There's a whole world of musical fun out there, peoples. Don't let Jools Holland hog it all!

Four starsDownload: Out now
CD Released: February 4th

(Fraser McAlpine)

Comments

  1. At 05:46 PM on 30 Jan 2008, JAF wrote:

    I think it sounds like a Eurovision entry cos it's njust like that

    [Exactly! - Fraser]

  2. At 09:02 AM on 31 Jan 2008, Ray wrote:

    "World Music" is rubbish - even Guardian readers only PRETEND to listen to it.

    [I dunno about that. I like bits and bobs here and there. But then what do I know? I pretend to read the Guardian. - Fraser]

  3. At 03:44 PM on 20 Feb 2008, carol wrote:

    at first, i didn't like this song, but i think the European folk style kinda works this song, well, if you're into that kind of stuff!

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