Windrush Baby

The debut album from the Welsh-Jamaican singer Aleighcia Scott is worth checking out both for the range and variety of her soulful, emotional singing and the production work by RoryStoneLove, aka Rory Gilligan, famed for his work with Jamaica’s celebrated sound system, Stone Love Movement. He too grew up in the UK (but in South London), and says his aim was to reflect the music that the sound systems would play at family parties in his youth. Reggae and lovers rock, the music that the Windrush generation brought to the UK, are strong influences here, but are updated with dub and brass work from musicians in Jamaica, where the album was recorded. It starts with ‘First Love’, in which Scott proves that her powerful voice can hold its own against Rory’s dub effects, elaborate production work and powerful trumpet solos from Dwight Richards. The set then speeds up with the brassy and cheerful ‘Good Vibe’, before she moves on to re-work the gently driving weepie ‘Do You’, originally sung by John Holt. There’s a change of mood and pace with the angry ‘Hey World’, in which she again holds her own against lush production work as she complains at the state of the planet, ‘this is an emergency, got to act with urgency,’ before furiously insisting ‘I’m not an object’ in ‘Pretty Little Brown Thing’.