Nell Bryden WHAT DOES IT TAKE. Looking at the cover art of this album takes me back to the golden years of blues and jazz, and the time when Stereo Fidelity HiFi was a new innovation proudly proclaimed on vinyl gatefold sleeves. For one’s face to appear on this artwork meant that you had made it big-time or at least had the vocal talent and potential to succeed; to become a star in the true sense of the word. It all seems so different now in that talent is no longer a prerequisite to becoming a successful recording artist - just look around you… American Nell Bryden is very much a performer in the traditional sense and whether peforming her own songs or interpreting the music of others, she leaves her vocal mark on the listener.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE offers a grand tour of the contemporary musical genres from blues to country to jazz to soul to pop. In fact it’s quite extroardinary how Bryden so easily adapts her voice for each style of music and sound so convincing. This can only mean that the singer is dedicated to her craft and great music.

‘What Does It Take’ is a sub-two-minute, fast-moving blues ballad that gets the album off to a blazing start. Bryden’s voice is expressive, powerful, and distinctive. ‘Not Like Loving You’ is classic soul - a great song and another amazing vocal performance which goes from a whisper to a roar effortlessly and effectively. ‘Where The Pavement Ends’ moves into country territory, while ‘Helen’s Requiem’ wanders down a folk path. What is so interesting is that Bryden makes each diverse style of music her own and even when she takes on a more modern (and excellent self-penned) pop ballad like ‘Goodbye’ it’s as though it’s her specialist area.

The other extraordinary thing about this wonderful album is that it sounds so cohesive despite its wide diversity of generic styles. There are several standouts here including the gently wandering and moving ‘Green Dress’ and the intimate night club ambience of ‘Tonight.’ I’m now really looking forward to seeing Bryden perform live at a local venue in ten days time. In fact I can’t bloody wait…!!

4/5

Biography

NELL BRYDEN from Brooklyn has the urban lifestyle in her blood, the country/folk spirit of Americana in her soul, and the great American songbook in her head.

Love and loss are the fuel that lights her songwriting fire. Rhythm and melody come naturally while a well-travelled journey through life provides a rich seam of experience to mine.

She’s a native New Yorker with a fondness for old-time music and vintage clothes, who’s seen the world and absorbed its musical influences: country and jazz, blues and soul, and more besides. You can hear as much of it - or as little - as you care to find in her music. Because, for all its familiar scents and flavours, her songs are distinctly her own.

Nell Bryden was born and raised in a bohemian quarter of Brooklyn where her mother Jane was a classical soprano who sang at Carnegie Hall and her father Lewis a renowned landscape painter whose works hang in some of America’s finest museums, galleries and private collections.

At only four weeks of age, her mother brought her on a concert tour of South America, planting the seed that blossomed on ‘What Does It Take’. “I always knew I would end up on stage,” says the ebullient singer. “As a child I used to put on plays with my friends - back when I was seven I wrote and directed a version of The Little Shop Of Horrors.”

For ten years she studied the cello and dreamed of becoming an opera singer until the day she first heard Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. “And that was that. I was 15 and that was the first time I realised it’s more about your personality than your technical prowess. People fell in love with Janis because she gave it everything.”

By the time she left high school, Nell still wanted to be the new Maria Callas, but that changed on a gap year trip to Australia, where she turned her travel diary into song lyrics, bought a cheap guitar, and began to sing her own songs for the first time.

Further travels broadened an already inquisitive mind: to Arizona, where she made daily free-fall jumps and lived on a drop zone; to Thailand to work in a refugee camp; to university in Boston, where she graduated in English Literature with honours and began to play in public for the first time.