No saints here, but it is a beautiful title.
Finley Quaye Sunday Shining.
A long time ago in a universe far, far away – 1997 in fact, Finley Quaye made a splash on the UK music scene, his debut LP Maverick A Strike going double platinum. Mrs 1537 bought the CD and I remember it being a long drive staple for years, I really liked it too but I only bought the singles.
Edinburgh born Finley, son of pianist Cab Quaye* and half-brother to stellar session guitarist Caleb Quaye, was always bracketed solely as a reggae singer but I think he was much more musically inventive and restless than that implies.
My copy of lead single Sunday Shining is a double 12″ promo copy with 7 tracks delivering 35 minutes of music** spanning modern reggae, gypsy-souled jazz and strange ambient field recordings. The man was a restless soul.
Sunday Shining opens with two versions of the title track, the first being called ‘Sunday Best’ which it isn’t, it has too dry and uptight a sound. The ‘proper’ version of ‘Sunday Shining’ is a real joy, drenched in Quaye’s guitar sound it is kind of a cover of Bob Marley’s 1971 ‘Sun Is Shining’ with extra bits. Quaye has a unique voice and I like the slightly cluttered sound he goes for here. He actually makes it sound like a feelgood Sunday morning, this is one of those rare tracks that makes me very happy every time I hear it.
Elsewhere we have the heavy dub adjacent ‘Mashing Up Lucifer/Stone The Devil’, which has its moments with some good atmospherics and interesting background sounds. For me it gets eclipsed by the sweetly musical ‘Singing From The Same Hymn Sheet’, which dubs it up a bit too. There is something very soulful about this track that I really like.
Flipping the thingy we get ‘Lover A Need I (Sony Walkman Mix)’ which adds A Guy Called Gerald’s talents to the cauldron. This one misses a beat for me, it sounds too muddy and busy.
The instrumental ‘Le Saint Des Delinquents’ is where its’ at for me on Sunday Shining. It is a difficult one to describe, even. Just a guitar and keyboard/piano it is a raggedy gypsy-souled jazz number, a bit Django Reinhardt even. I’d share it with you all but it doesn’t seem to exist online. I would like to know more about it, who the keyboard player was, how it was recorded, but it’s also nice to have little mysteries left too in this age of information saturation.
So that’s the first 26 minutes covered, the next 9 are a decidedly off-the-wall track called ‘The Birds’ which sounds like a sound collage of field recordings of rainforest birds. I told you the man was a restless soul.
So there’s Sunday Shining for you, it is a great, mad, helter-skelter of tracks and a very interesting calling card for a top young talent who refused to be limited by genre and who could really play.
Sadly, Finley is what the British tabloid press gleefully call ‘troubled’ these days and the maverick young talent with a cheeky grin has been eclipsed by it all. Think of him this way though, bursting with ideas and stuffed full of soul.
The promo version of Sunday Shining I own is excellent, one of a number that his label, Haiku released for the singles off his debut. There is always something very satisfying about a double 12″ package too.
1087 Down.
*English born of Ghanaian descent his full name was Nii-lante Augustus Kwamlah Quaye, which is just a wonderful name.
**technically 1.5 Van Halen LPs worth.
Yeah. Liking it. Sure reminds me of something Im trying to pull out of the storage room of my mind. Lots to like.
Not the straight-forward reggae artist he used to be pitched as.
Very cool. I have Maxinquaye (or whatever it’s called) but I’m only a tourist. Neat stuff!
I’ve never liked Tricky so much – I childishly took against him for covering ‘Black Steel In the Hour of Chaos’ and never gave him a fair chance after that. I do own some 12″s of his stuff though.
LOL here’s you taling about Finley Quaye and me talking about Tricky. Nevermind me LOL!
There are rumours out there that the great Lewis Taylor was involved with Finlay, maybe he played some keys on ‘Le Saint’.
That’s really interesting, I only discovered Lewis Taylor very very recently and I am smitten.
A poor man’s Haddaway
We are all poor men’s Haddaways
That was a bit way out there.
I loved Sunday shining back in the day. A lot. I never did check out Quaye’s other work but I still have fond memories of rocking out to that one song over and over.
It was a big record. I also really liked the Dice one he did with William Orbit later.
Isn’t Caleb Quaye an interesting dude? He is not only playing, but a co-writer on the recently unearthed ‘first’ Elton John album from circa 1968.
Isn’t half-brother an interesting compound word? Half brother, half scooter. Half brother, half lamington. Must be time for morning coffee.
He is an interesting guy, worked with a lot of folk. Must have been great being a top end studio musician back then.