Chandelier & Bloom – Mae Simpson (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

There are some songs which just sound like classics as soon as you hear them. Songs that go beyond mere genres or styles, songs that aren’t weighed down by baggage such as fashion and scenes. Songs that may be new sonic kids on the musical block but which feel as if you have known them forever. I guess that some treasured songs acquire the weight of history and the love of the masses over a long and gradual period of time, but others arrive fully formed with that vibe already attached. It is in that last category that this new single, the title track of Mae Simpson’s debut album, Chandelier & Bloom, falls.

Blending the best of R’n’B and soul and rock and blues, the music might be bang up to date, but the feeling is timeless, casting a shadow back through everything from 90’s revivalist pop to 70’s soul heydays to 60’s Motown and even sitting shoulder to shoulder comfortably next to the early jazz and roots singers of the early post-war years.

Not only a great song but one that proves that you don’t have to look for new gimmicks or invent new hybrid genres to get noticed. If you are good enough, you can blend the traditional, tried and tested genres together, not to mention do so with passion and authenticity, perhaps the part that most people forget, and come up with your own take on those signature sounds. And boy, is Mae good enough. And then some.