Review: Princess Freesia - The Rainbow Ride

There's a saying, "never judge a book by its cover", or in this instance, "never judge an album by its cover", but when I saw the cover of this album, I had a feeling it would be excellent, and as I listened to it, I was damn right about that! It most certainly is excellent!

Princess Freesia was born over in Australia, but has since come over here to dark and damp England and is assigned to the UK label "Digisoul", working with Soulpersona who released the album entitled "The Lapdancer" in 2011. One year later in 2012, Princess Freesia released this album, "The Rainbow Ride" also on Digisoul, in which she was both singer and songwriter to all the material on this CD.

"The Rainbow Ride" as an album is a beautiful spectrum of really luscious funky grooves, which as Princess Freesia put it on the liner notes, "each track has its own personality". Yet as any beautiful rainbow appears in the sky, all different colours shine together perfectly, and this album hangs together in the exact same way. There are so many audible influences going on in this album: one moment there's a strong presence of a retro jazz-funk, and then the next moment Princess Freesia is dropping a 90s style drumbeat, but everything hangs together with the same boogie feel. It's obvious by the cover and the overall late 70s/early 80s boogie feel that this album is strongly retro, and here at The Flagship For Funk, we ADORE those who go unashamedly for the retro, but Freesia also manages to keep a modern and digital feel to the whole project without the classy retro feeling being compromised in any way, which is just awesome! The production and engineering is also flawless on this album, giving the tracks the richness of sound that they deserve, and giving the best of both retro and modern.

Princess Freesia has a fantastic voice that sets the grooves alight time and time again. Her vocals are similar in sound to Pauline Wilson of Seawind, but Freesia has her own style in her own right which matches perfectly with her equally fantastic groove making abilities! And damn, the grooves are tight! 13 tracks of brilliance! Immediately she locks onto the classy early 80s boogie feel with her second track "Gonna Be Allright"; a nice paced dancer with a totally relaxed ambiance that hits the peaks of brilliance for modern soul and funk. After which, the third track, "Stellar Sight" is a marked contrast. It has the sounds and the feel of an early 80s slowjam; the kind of song that would be on a Raydio or Instant Funk album as a slowjam, but Princess Freesia has added a more midtempo pace to this type of sound with a nice modern sounding drumbeat which speeds it up nicely to make a very unique sounding track. To hear a song like this is a really refreshing change and shows that there's still clever songwriting abilities about these days: as most songwriters opt comfortably for a "modern soul stepper" or a "slowjam", Princess Freesia takes us back to the days of Slave's "Let's Spend Some Time", Maze's "Joy And Pain" etc, where a song couldn't be as easily pinned down between "stepper" or "slowjam", which makes "Stellar Sight" a fascinating and unusual song in the fold of this album!

"Playgrind", the fourth track brings out that retro jazz-funk groove, with the flute breaks in the background. Freesia uses her vocals very artfully on this track, using her "vocals like a jazz instrument" as Steve Arrington would put it. The following track "Taffeta" brings some nice smooth saxophone work with a heavy 90s drumbeat, which hangs together beautifully and might just be my favourite track on this album. Track eight, "Thinkin About You" is the slowest paced track on the album, and has some really nice playful synth work in the background with a nice squelchy synth bass. Again, although this song is the closest to a "slowjam", it isn't entirely like a slowjam, and is written in a nice and unpredictable way. Princess Freesia then lays down a really nice groove on the tenth track, "Play With Me", which is really reminiscent of the mid-late 80s indie modern soul, done with a nice smooth electro style drumbeat and then on track 12 lays down a heavy bass driven boogie called "I Can See", which has a nice EWF vibe to it.

This album is easily one of the best funk/soul/boogie albums of the past 10 or twenty years. It is definitely the best one of the new decade, without competition. There are so many musical influences flourishing within each track, yet Princess Freesia has spun everything together in a unique way which is one heck of a rainbow ride!! Let's just hope there's a second rainbow ride coming from the amazing Princess Freesia!!