Music Plus with Winston Watusi watusi@thesun.co.nz

Fiona Cosgrove’s new album, Introspective has been out for more than a month.

Actually, the delay has been deliberate: I’ve been waiting for it to appear on Spotify.

Since Fiona played launch shows in July that does seem like a long delay, especially for non-Spotifiers. Thing is, there’re not a lot left. Most artists and listeners now use the platform. Even Darren Watson, to pick a random albeit outspoken New Zealand musician, has finally accepted it after years of principled abstention.

So I figured I’d wait till now, when you can click on the week’s playlist and hear what I’m banging on about. It would have been sooner if Fiona was on Bandcamp, a service where you can both stream a limited number of times and buy downloads or CDs, but she’s not.

I was an admirer of Fiona’s long before Introspective, both of her singing and because I know how hard it is for singers to make a musical living.

I’ve seen her play now at several jazz and blues festivals, each time with a different band – sometimes The Holy Pocket – and I know the bands are different because it’s impossible to keep one outfit together if you’re a singer when your musicians are all also working to make a musical living and have to play with a bunch of other people too so often aren’t available.

I’ve also seen her singing solo with backing tracks at the likes of the Barrel Room and Jack Dusty’s, not the most prestigious gigs for someone of Fiona’s talents. But she does the work.

Originally from the Bay of Plenty, now residing in Auckland, Fiona recorded the album there, with Tim Vaughan as musical director and guitarist. There are 10 songs, nine of them Fiona’s and it’s a powerhouse of big bluesy jazzy soul. Or big soulful jazzy blues. It’s certainly big and Fiona is a big singer; the band, horns and all, is also big. The album title, lyrically accurate, does not describe the music.

Fiona Cosgrove.

Opener All The Things exemplifies this: muscular soul, stabbing horns, a biting guitar solo and impassioned vocals – dynamite. Glitter initially comes on like a big ballad, then there’s a rhythm change and it rocks out too.

Elsewhere things move more towards straight blues with Mama, Rotorua’s Peri Grant providing blues harp, and dynamic funk with Next To Me. It really is a staggeringly impressive album, world-class. I can’t recommend Introspective’enough.

Also well worthwhile is local singer-songwriter Frances Ellen’s self-titled debut EP. It’s now on Spotify, co-written with Reb Fountain, produced by Dave Khan, very much “an introduction to Frances Ellen”. All The Things (In Too Deep) is the final of four songs. It’s wistful – dare I say “introspective” – folky pop with an atmospheric string arrangement, completing a fine debut from someone I reckon we’ll hear a lot more from.

Frances Ellen.

Hear Winston’s latest Playlist: https://tinyurl.com/mtehnzzc