EP Review: A Lil Somethin’ Somethin’

A flurry of gigs including at Meow, Moon and Valhalla last year, and this year recording a series of tracks for a debut EP (with a brand new band), has made for a quick-fire opening chapter to Wellington singer-songwriter Katelyn Henshall’s music career. For anyone writing, performing and recording music while holding down a job and meeting life’s other general requirements, they will know what it takes to do all this.  Credit then to Henshall for releasing this debut four-track EP A Lil Somethin’ Somethin’ after a recording block earlier this year and pre-empting it with a series of singles releases, whilst all the time appearing in Wellington’s – dare we say – more discerning and sophisticated venues?

Henshall pitches herself as the late night act in an upstairs whiskey bar where R&B, soul and pop are on a date night out together. Picture it. In the opening tracks of this EP, this is not some dark speakeasy with cheese platters and a serious dress code, where people sit down and discuss high culture. And it’s not somewhere serving only whiskey. No, this place is more fun. There’s chocolate stout on tap, probably cigars, and people are dancing. At least, on this three-way date night that R&B, soul and pop music I imagine are having together (a date that must be soundtracked by Henshall’s EP), there is a grand old time being had by all, slurping drinks and bumping hips on the tiniest of dance floors.

At least, that’s how it starts … 

The set begins with Take Me Away, a classy jazz guitar and spring reverb-drenched opener that defies expectations of its quiet first bars. As the song gets to its feet, Henshall’s lyrics come at pace, and beautifully, before Angus Webb’s raucous guitar work takes over for a moment before the closing refrain (“take me away” repeated some twenty-four times), but it sounds like a statement of intent rather than a surrender. It seems it is us who are about to be led away by Henshall, not her to be taken away by anyone else.

And so, if you weren’t dancing already (having been taken off to this tiny dancefloor), you will be by the opening bars of the second track Nothing Lasts Forever (de Verano), a part English part Spanish R&B piece again featuring Webb’s guitar and the excellent Dónal Gunning on the fattest bass anyone has heard in a while. It’s excellent stuff and yep, I wish I was part of this three-way date between music genres. 

But then we come to the second part of the EP. The third track Contrast is a stripped back acoustic piece with Henshall’s voice at dead centre, sounding as bright and smooth as Corrine Bailey Rae. It’s an emotional change from the almost-bumping and grinding of the earlier tracks … but it seems to me, it really is just an introduction for the closing, excellent and pummelling What You Want Me To Be. This is a meditation on that most universal and difficult of human troubles:  on the expectations of others being unmet, despite our best efforts. “Don’t you see, see, that I can’t be what you need,” Henshall sings, as if begging to be released from whatever duties are upon her. Traumatic indeed. She runs away, takes time out, wishes for something better, yet remains unable to meet whoever’s standards these are …. Musically, What You Want Me To Be is more complex and exquisitely shaped than the earlier tracks and introduces something entirely new from the opening good times of the first two tracks.    

So … A Lil Somethin’ Somethin’ is a great debut. A broad statement of intent, painted on a large canvas. A good night out, grounded by emotional maturity. A fantastic voice and band delivering the goods, on the type of night out I think you want and probably need. Go and see her.