Photo: Press
Singer, songwriter, model, online fashion shop owner and producer V V Brown is a pin up for the recession. After an underwhelming 2009 pop breakthrough, her comeback last year, Samson & Delilah, couldn’t be further from her sugar-coated soul-pop debut.
In its provocative, avant-garde, synthy tracks, Brown shows resilience and adaptation as key to any current artist’s survival. Commencing with her own twist on Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, sung in inherently gospel-sounding vocals, Brown has a seductive Sade quality to her aura. She manages to be alluring without having to take off her baseball cap. Her second offering, ‘Substitute for Love’ had distinctly underwater-echoed sonics that present the dark, harsh, but true beauty of nature.
With her third track, ‘Nothing Really Matters’, she begins low and gruff, as she applies her fashion attitude and poses for a polished visual performance. Many of Brown’s songs appear to be about trouble and empowerment: subjects, which are reinforced by ominous, bassy electro and present her as a force to be reckoned with. Pulling another trick out of her trench coat sleeve, Brown begins to rap, which, along with several other fleeting moments, seem to be a hat tip to the musical fabrics that make her who she is.
Demonstrating yet more versatility, Brown turns to the keys for a euphoric club track with the intensity of a stadium gig. She shows a strength many should aspire to and a genuine versatility without having to be a soulless chameleon or pop-bitch. Brown takes a brief break to talk about her journey as an artist in what she describes as a ‘cheesy segue’ to her next track ‘Faith’. Yet, this couldn’t have more legitimate, raw emotion, the kind not often openly laid out in this manner. ‘Faith’ is not only the sentiment of her latest album, but seemingly sums up her artists ethos.
Later comes ‘Samson’, not only the album title track but also the first release off it. With biblical references and Kate Bush uniqueness it is an epic moment. The lyrics, “What you waiting for?” are as if she is talking to herself, but she waits for nothing, she takes it, she creates, she is the opportunist, the go-getter. Brown closes with a James Blake sounding take on her previous pop single ‘Shark in the Water’. She soulfully holds back with a sense of the beautiful unknown and we witness the rebirth of the artist V V Brown.
