What's up with Gregory Porter?

Listening to tracks so far from Gregory Porter's new record All Rise there's nothing here to really grip on to in the way that Porter used to prove capable of providing going back to Water and Be Good. He hasn't made a truly moving album since Liquid Spirit.

Why I wonder? Does stardom do things to you that change you as an artist? Porter's peaks were so high is it even possible to maintain that incredible momentum time after time?

Certainly Porter became that rare thing for a jazzman: a TV star, certainly in the UK, and a much loved figure. That has not changed. I don't know what happened though to the records. The songs aren't as good, the production is more showbiz, it does not feel anything near as real and personal as it once did.

Hopefully things will change and a new cycle will begin. First things first: strip the whole thing back. For now it's not working except on the mainstream entertainer level which he never really was starting out, he was instead perfect in a small club or theatre.

Porter however is still a great singer, still a benevolent presence, still someone you want to know about. Let's see what's round the corner and hope somehow he can dispense with some of the showbiz trappings for once and for all and listen to his label and producer less. SG

All Rise promo tracks, above

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Eerie we want, given the current time, eerie we end up with on My Dinner With Andrea a new duo album from Bobby Previte and Michael Kammers. Previte concocts quite a tapestry of overdubs utilising besides drums and their electronic cousins, synthesizer, vibes, percussion and yes coconut shells. Kammers restricts himself to flute, tenor saxophone, electronics and keys.

The album title puns quite deliciously on writer Andrea Kleine's first name and the title of the 1980s Louis Malle film My Dinner with André drawing too on its psychological intensity.

Previte and Kleine have worked together a fair few times over the years. There is a serenity, that eeriness again folded in, to the music, I like first up. Vibes play a significant part in its trajectory. Fairly brief you are left wanting more. Previte has always been an interesting writer and manages the feat of drawing on the avant garde and shackling it as a commentary on the heart of an imagined historic jazz sound however obliquely.

The drummer-composer may be able to ''break your heart with one cymbal crash'' as his publicity in the past regularly trotted out in a winning phrase but largely refrains from doing so here although Kammers does his best on sax on his bolt from the blue Gato Barbieri-like solo on 'The Swirl' where he lets go in a fireworks moment.

Definitely appealing and counterintuitively much more enjoyable than Previte's recent Music From the Early 21st Century that had its moments and is certainly jazzier but was curiously patchier. SG

What's up with Gregory Porter?

Bobby Previte, My Dinner With Andrea