Sunday Best

Marcia sang in the choir before she sang in the clubs, and she has never seen a reason to choose. Sunday Best is her band out of Catford — the Broadway, the market, the big cat over the shopping centre — and the name is the clothes and the attitude: Sunday best, every day of the week. Cutty chops the breaks on the sampler and keeps the swing; Lorna arranged the whole thing round the vocal on Rhodes and DX7; Big George plays the bass deep and lets it breathe. Then Marcia walks in and fills the room.

This is late-80s street soul — swung programmed drums, round sub bass, synth strings, gospel backing — with a gospel-raised belter on top who has never been restrained in her life. Both Feet Down is a grown woman who knows exactly what she's worth; Church Shoes takes it back to the front pew and her mother's hands; Sugar and Salt is the big ballad where she takes the roof off. Grown-folks soul for grown-folks problems, from the lineage that runs from lovers rock to the Sunday jazz-dance and on into the nineties.