Album: Joan Armatrading - How Did This Happen and What Does It Now Mean

Hard to believe it’s coming up to 30 years since “Love and Affection” put Joan Armatrading in the top 10, a track from her third, self-titled, album which confirmed the arrival of a major talent. “Down to Zero” was another of the album’s enduring cuts – two timeless classics which the passing time hasn’t dimmed.

How Did This Happen And What Does It Now Mean is her 21st studio album, and it’s written, produced, programmed and engineered by Armatrading who, from her very earliest days in the studio, has always played an array of instruments. In 2022, she composed a symphony for the Chineke! Orchestra, the first to be made up of Black and ethnically diverse musicians. So, not one to sit on her laurels, as this latest outing demonstrates. It’s a disco-inflected feel-good album that seems set to bring in new fans without alienating older ones.

The sound, and the style of her singing and the timbre of the voice, are unmistakably Armatrading, the links to those Seventies classics easily discernible, but I also hear faint, passing echoes of Peter Gabriel and the Beach Boys. It’s a very full-on sound, and I always prefer a little more light and air, but there’s no denying the skill and the panache with which she pulls it all off. There are the usual Armatrading hallmarks, vocal multitracking and echo, all of it propelled by guitar and drums. One or two numbers feel a little too repetitive, and “Irresistible” suffers from bloat and an overly insistent drum.

“I'm Not Moving”, the single, was written in response to Armatrading’s witnessing a confrontation, a young person screaming the words that give this edgy, adrenalised song its title. “I'm going to kill everybody! I'm not moving! You can get the police! You can't move me!”  Explains Armatrading: “All the lyrics just flowed, in one, and I knew it had to have an aggression, because that's how he was. I did a version of it that was a little bit milder, but you could tell that wasn't it."

There are two instrumentals, “Back and Forth” and “Now What”, which showcase Armatrading’s prowess as a guitarist. We talk about “axemen” and it’s true there aren’t too many women who can compete – the incomparable Bonnie Raitt obviously, but also the criminally under-acknowledged Janis Ian, who is one of the truly great songwriters of the last half-century or so. There’s a sense in which Armatrading is her British equivalent.

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