Brilliant Barbra gives us a piece of her mind
BARBRA STREISAND: Walls (Columbia) Verdict: Hope, despair — and a masterclass ★★★★✩ SHERIDAN SMITH: A Northern Soul (Rhino) Verdict: Bittersweet torch songs ★★★✩✩
Barbra Streisand was originally going to call her latest album What’s On My Mind, after one of her new songs. It would have been a better title than Walls.
The New York singer spent the past five years adding gloss to her legacy as the queen of broadway — 2016’s Encore was a theatrical tour de force — but this is something different.
Her first album of mostly new material since 2005, it finds her addressing ‘troubling times’. It’s not a hectoring protest record, but it doesn’t pull its punches.
If that sounds heavy going, it’s not. Streisand, 76, believes music should transcend politics — she is a lifelong Democrat with plenty of republican fans — and the points she makes are universal. There are no direct references to President Trump, although it’s clear his administration is one of the many things ‘on her mind’.
before we get to hear her sing, though, she sets out her stall on sleeve notes that lament, among other things, the erosion of Press freedom and an absence of ‘basic human decency’. as befits a diva who enjoys the personal touch, the sleeve also features her dogs Scarlet, Violet and Fanny.
as for the songs, three of the best are Streisand co-writes. brilliantly arranged by brazilian producer Walter afanasieff, What’s On My Mind calls for a ‘ new conversation’ against a backdrop of Leo amuedo’s finger-picked classical guitar.
THE upbeat Don’t Lie To Me, with strings by beck’s father David Campbell, is enigmatic enough to be both an angry, adele-style break-up song and a comment on fake news. The rain Will Fall, complete with thunderclaps, is less subtle: ‘You can tell a lie a thousand times, but that doesn’t make it real.’
Elsewhere, better angels is inspired by President Lincoln’s inaugural address in 1861, while the title track is a piano ballad which deduces that the world would be a better place if all walls, physical and emotional, ‘came tumbling down’.
These originals are spliced with four hit-and-miss covers. The first is a schmaltzy mash-up of John Lennon’s Imagine and Louis armstrong’s What a Wonderful World that zigzags so randomly between the two that even Streisand can’t save it.
Take Care Of This House is from 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, Leonard bernstein and alan Jay Lerner’s flop 1967 musical about the Oval Office.
The two other covers are barbra at her best. The bacharach-David classic What The World Needs Now is sung with dramatic tempo changes.
It opens as a slow ballad and then nods to bacharach’s original middling tempo before moving forward in the sumptuous style of soul man Luther Vandross — with backing vocals by Michael McDonald and r& b producer Kenneth ‘ babyface’ Edmonds. Happy Days are Here again is another masterclass. a song that opened side two of barbra’s 1963 debut LP, The barbra Streisand album, it’s a standard she has revisited many times, although never quite like she does here. Set to a bold orchestral arrangement, it’s sung as a whispered ballad that balances despair — it ends in a loud sigh — with a sense of hope. It’s the perfect finale to an album that couches her convictions in a voice that is still extraordinary. Sheridan Smith, left, has yet to pull off the transition from musical theatre to pop, but her second album sees her move more forcefully in that direction. Unlike last year’s effort Sheridan, on which she was most comfortable on show tunes, a Northern Soul focuses on new material by pairing her with two reliable songwriters in Eg White and amy Wadge.
The results are revealing, recasting the actress who starred in Cilla as a femme fatale (Handle With Care), romantic disaster zone (rock bottom) and lovesick torch singer (ain’t That Funny).
With arrangements that veer from the northern soul alluded to in the title to country-pop (her parents worked as a country duo), she has scope to shine.
Smith, 37, is at her most convincing when chronicling the way that music continues to save her from heartache. She shows maturity on are You Just Sleeping? and sings the praises of Johnny Cash and aretha Franklin on remedy In The Melody.
The sense of an actress playing a role remains — The One is too melodramatic — but it’s one she is growing into.
BOTH albums are out today. Sheridan is the subject of the documentary Coming home on ITV at 9.30pm this Sunday.