Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Behind the simplest name can stand a giant in waiting! For Leonie Evans, Lorenzo Prati, Leon Boyden and Dan Truen, Rae is a word of simplicity, of unforgettable naming, but it is a band that hides within its soul, a sound so complete, so wonderfully down-trodden that it hits below the belt time after time and catches the listener unaware of what is happening to them. Now with their brand new album, Awoken, ready to captivate and further enhance the feeling of sitting in a cigar filled room and seeing the smoke part just enough to allow vision to take in clarity, Rae step out from beyond the shadows and blast their music all over your ear-drums.
Bristol is a world away from the delights and deprivations that used to smoulder and ooze out of every pore on the streets of Upper Manhattan, the close quarters of machine gun fired Jazz creeping out beyond the doors of the clubs that was so intoxicating it made your heart bleed as every cymbal crash or sax solo took out another wanting emotion. Bristol is seen as the meeting place between the three national emotions of the West Country, The land of the language of the Welsh and the southern English dogmatic undisturbed sentiment; it is not the place where you would expect memories of nights listening to the greats that frequented the late night bars around 77th Street or wondering if the sound of saxophone can actually be any sweeter or carry so much feeling within in valves.
Rae’s musicians have so much breadth to music that the sound of Lorenzo Prati’s tenor sax coupled with the scorching beauty in Leonie Evans voice is just a highlight amongst many. The sound is true; there is no illusion or smoke and mirrors effect in which the foursome groove out an assortment of tangled up notes. There is sincerity in the dejected but tantalising melancholy and in tracks such as the aptly titled Heart Stopper, Foreign Lands, Phononomous, Sublime Notion and the superb A Dream, that sincerity is played in earnest and with unaffected authenticity over the story line that weaves throughout each song.
The heavy laden cigar smoke, no longer a potent force in western society Jazz café culture is much missed when it evokes memories of the past, thankfully Rae’s music captures that missing piece of the puzzle and in Awoken, a Bristol quartet have stirred a lumbering sexy beast.
Ian D. Hall