Soul like Tina Turner. Folk like Tracy Chapman. Allison’s a star at last
Allison Russell
Lafayette, London
Billy Joel
Turn The Lights Back On Single, out now
The race is not to the swift, the Old Testament assures us, nor the battle to the strong. It’s a nice idea that doesn’t often come true. But when it does, it can be life-enhancing.
Allison Russell, a Canadian singer of Scottish and Grenadian descent, has been making albums since 1999. She has featured in five bands and you might never have heard of any of them.
She finally went solo in 2021 after doing some thinking while locked down with her husband and co-writer J.T. Nero and their daughter, and receiving encouragement from Brandi Carlile – the singer who also coaxed Joni Mitchell out of retirement.
Russell has now made two acclaimed albums, won 14 awards, and has just received four Grammy nominations for The Returner. After a quarter of a century she has become an overnight success.
To see her on stage is to wonder what took her so long. She has the presence of a star while also being down to earth, cracking jokes with her band of gifted women and chatting freely to the audience.
She has quite a story to tell. As a child she was put into care, after her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her mother remarried and Allison was reunited with her, only to find that her stepfather was two nightmares in one – a child abuser and a white supremacist. ‘Can’t think of a thing,’ she sings, ‘that hasn’t been shot through with pain.’
She dealt with this by running away from home, by falling in love with a girl (a tale beautifully told in her song Persephone), and eventually by bringing charges. Now she views her tormentor with compassion. ‘Nobody’s a monster,’ she tells the crowd, ‘unless they have monstrous things done to them.’
Her music somehow converts all the pain into pleasure. It ranges from hushed folk to full-throttle soul: one minute she’s Tracy Chapman, the next she’s Tina Turner. She may not be swift but she is certainly strong. She sends 600 people away feeling more alive.
One of the most deafening silences in pop history came to an end on Thursday when Billy Joel released a single. It’s his first new song since 2007 and only his third since 1993.
Turn The Lights Back On is very Billy Joel, an old-school piano ballad. For two minutes, until the drums and strings kick in, the Piano Man is just a man with a piano, a melody and a metaphor.
The melody is immediate, the metaphor simple but affecting. ‘Did I wait too long,’ he wonders as a love affair wobbles, ‘to turn the lights back on?’ At 74, Joel has still got it. I just hope he can hang on to it.