Review Summary: One of the year's biggest growers, Gin is certain to charm her way into many an eardrum with her sensational debut.
Since marrying Mandy Moore and focusing on painting (as you do), Ryan Adams has left his backing band, the Cardinals, with relatively little to do. Thankfully, however, the band themselves had an ace up their sleeves – bet you weren’t expecting it to be a bubbly, blonde twentysomething Kiwi though, did you?
Meet Gin Wigmore. She has been singing her little heart out since she was little (an all-too-familiar tale of the rising star), but it has only in the past couple of years that she’s been able to impact on her talents and get her own material out there. After a few extremely lucky breaks including winning an international songwriting competition and performing with the likes of John Butler and Pete Murray, Wigmore is finally ready to drop her debut LP onto the unsuspecting masses. It’s obvious the Cardinals are on to something here: the album,
Holy Smoke, is a soul-invigorated pop beast. This is an instantaneously likable release which, given time, could even grow to be lovable.
Across the album’s ten tracks, the centrepiece of each song that sticks its boots right out of the speakers and into your face is Gin’s vocals. Sure, there’s some pretty easy Duffy and Amy Winehouse comparisons to be made to Wigmore’s sting-in-the-tail contralto, but really - just why the hell weren’t we paying closer attention to this woman sooner? With every rasp, howl and under-breath moan emphasised through crystal-clear production, we discover a voice with confidence, sassiness and the utmost of class. Whether she’s leading the charge in toe-tapping numbers such as the twirling “Don’t Stop” and ferocious lead single “Oh My”; or soulfully, emotionally crooning through smooth, down-tempo balladry like the gorgeous “Golden Ship”, Wigmore is pulling vocal moves like a professional. Her liquored pronunciations and seamless transitions between her empowered husk (“The new revolution is here!”) and her seductive purr (“Oh my god, I’ve been beaten in the game of love”) are worth the price of purchase alone.
To say that everything else is a bonus would be to undermine the Cardinals’ performance – something no reviewer should be caught doing, record regardless. On Holy Smoke, the band are tight as ever, and certainly sounding like they’re having a lot more fun than their last few records with Adams. The band create vivacious and well-structured backdrops to Wigmore’s voice; bold and adventurous in their ambitious genre-hopping. Various guises of pop and soul make up the musical centrepiece, but elements of rock (the guitar-driven swagger of “Oh My”), traditional folk (the swaying ukulele found in the lovely “I Do”) and even fifties rockabilly matched head-on with blues and doo-wop (the excellent “One Last Look”). If there’s any issue to be taken with their work here, it is that they tend to succeed far more on the record’s more upbeat moments, so much so that it overshadows their work on the ballads. That aside, it’s a difficult task ahead of the person attempting to fault Cris, Neil, Brad and Jon.
There’s definitely a market for
Holy Smoke. This will most likely be brandished about as the new
Back to Black or
Rockferry, but to umbrella Wigmore as another doorstop in the nu-soul trend is, to a certain extent, miss the point. Certainly, Gin Wigmore is in the teeth-cutting process, and there’s a lot of work to be done. But as far as debut efforts go, Gin has put her name to one of the year’s more infectious listens. You may even catch Ryan Adams dancing with Mandy to these jams.
