Sister Loretta

Loretta Pinnock was singing lovers rock at blues dances off Bellenden Road before she was old enough to be let in, and by 1981 she had the thing every lovers singer wanted: a voice that made a room go quiet. What she didn't have was any interest in the whole song. The verses bored her. She liked the refrain — the two lines everybody waited for — and she liked what happened to them when the engineer pushed the fader and the plate reverb swallowed her. So that became the act. A front-room studio a few streets from Rye Lane, a Rhodes, a bass player who never hurried, and Loretta singing two lines at the top of every section and then stepping back from the mic to let the desk have her.

The records are small and enormous at once. Bellenden Road Dub is the sound of a Tuesday-night phone call; Queens Road Night Bus is a girl on the top deck of the 36 deciding whether to get off at his stop. Hold Me In Echo is the one the sound systems fought over — a refrain so plain it hurts, dubbed out until only the tail of her voice is left. She never recorded a full lovers song. She said the echo was the song.