Gig review: Annie and The Caldwells + James Emmanuel at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
The Mississippi-based family group offers conclusive proof that devil does not have all the best tunes.
As James Emmanuel’s superb five-piece band start to circle around an acutely funky riff at the start of tonight’s 30-minute support set, you could be forgiven for hoping that there won’t be any singing to mess with the rich instrumental interplay.
It soon turns out that the Edinburgh-based singer and songwriter has the kind of powerful, gutsy classic soul voice that would enhance any musical gathering – and, crucially, songs to match.
Emmanuel and co. (with atmospheric touches from liberal sprinklings of trombone and trumpet) may have consumed the entire Stax catalogue, whilst also snacking on Motown. The uniformly strong material visits familiar classic soul templates: a ‘message’ song in Brothers and Sisters; love, lust and relationships in You’re So Good to Me.
However, any whiff of retro pastiche is scrubbed out by the band’s joyously combustible groove-building and Emmanuel’s effortlessly engaging performance, custom-built to reach out to remotest corners of considerably larger venues; if tonight’s audience reaction is any indication, that is precisely where this outfit is heading.
Many bands would struggle to follow up the palpable enjoyment generated by James Emmanuel. Annie & The Caldwells don’t have any such concerns this evening: in fact, the West Point, Mississippi-based gospel family group could potentially establish a side hustle by teaching other performers how to get a crowd on their side and keep them there for the duration of a show.
Centred on the remarkable, raw yet also tender voice of Ms Annie Caldwell (with her daughters Deborah and Anjessica providing harmonies and affirmative counterpoints with a seemingly telepathic ability to predict where the often flexibly structured songs are heading to next), the group’s progression from playing in the church every other Sunday to touring the world’s hipper music venues is a delightfully improbable story.
The impossibly obscure B-side of a single Annie Caldwell recorded as part of Staples Jr Singers in the 1970s was selected for 2019’s The Time Is Now, a compilation of rare funky gospel released by David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, which eventually also put out last year’s justifiably praised Can’t Lose My (Soul), the debut album of the group Ms. Annie formed some 40 years ago: Annie & The Caldwells.
For all the album’s many merits, it provides a mere blueprint for the seemingly inexhaustible reserves of funkiness on display tonight. The music is unmistakably and authentically southern gospel: there are moments (such as the slow-burning testimonial of perseverance through faith I’m Going to Rise) that are near to pure undiluted preaching, albeit of a positive and hopeful rather than fire and brimstone variety.
Powered by the chicken-scratch funk guitar (with flashes of wah-wah extemporisation that wouldn’t feel out of place on an early Funkadelic cut) of Ms Annie’s husband (and dad to all other band members) Willie Joe Caldwell, Sr, tonight setlist takes on southern soul (Don’t You Hear Me Calling), classic funk (I Made It, which its references Gap Band’s You Dropped The Bomb on Me, with the bomber in question being Satan rather than a lover), and even disco, on the set-opening, seriously infectious Wrong.
There is a healthy show of hands when Ms. Annie asks if there are any fellow believers in Jesus in tonight’s rapturously appreciative audience, but you don’t need to share the group’s spiritual convictions to be moved and swept along by the powerful performance, which virtually defies anyone present not to dance or react when the Caldwells call for audience participation.
The one-hour performance finishes with Anjessica Caldwell and Deborah Caldwell Moore amidst the appreciative crowd, singing snippets of Boogie Wonderland: a close communion to sign off a remarkably engaging evening.