Live Review: Soulfest

This year’s inaugural Soulfest set itself the task of being a neo-soul, jazz and hip hop festival. Despite the fact that the bill features no actual jazz artists, festival organisers do manage to get our attention with an enticing selection of veteran neo-soul and hip hop artists.

The cancellation of the entire day’s entertainment (due to technical difficulties) on the Spotify stage, which is not even set up, sees punters focus their attention toward the international heavyweights on the main stage.

Just missing an apparently fabulous set by Leela James is a disappointment to be blamed on public transport delays. It’s the deliciously honeyed tones of Angie Stone that welcome us to Soulfest. Right from her early work in the ‘80s – with electro-funk outfit The Sequence, which eventually gave way to her re-invention as one of the original ‘90s neo-soul divas – Stone is 100% original. Resplendent in a black evening dress with rather bling silver and gold highlights, Stone is in mighty fine form as she belts out a handful of her best-known tunes. Paying homage to Curtis Mayfield with a cover of The Makings Of You, Stone’s version is perfection as it blossoms into a sweet soul jam. Wish I Didn’t Miss You is a feel-good highlight from a short set that teases fans who have waited a very long time for the pleasure. Despite issues with feedback and sound quality (which also taint a few of the other artist’s sets), Stone is an early afternoon highlight.

Few artists on the Soulfest line-up have a new album to promote and Musiq Soulchild is no exception as he runs us through almost 40 minutes of his best moments. A medley he expects the audience to sing along with elicits a lukewarm response, but once he gets busy Musiq Soulchild and his band deal sultry R&B soul vibes that rock gently. His band, like many on the bill today, seem a little constrained by the chillaxed  grooves they are playing and look for those occasional moments that allow them to rock out a little harder.

Sydney no-show rapper Yasiin Bey (previously known as Mos Def) has the crowd bumping as he confidently stalks the stage spitting his flawless political and poetic flow into a sexy red microphone over a mélange of soulful samples delivered by two crack turntablists. Bey works the excited crowd without the usual braggadocio associated with the genre.

Much of the crowd dissipates after his set, which makes the charming Aloe Blacc and his tight, funky band work just a little bit harder to get our attention. Blacc still needs a dollar, but feel-good tunes like You Make Me Smile and Love Is The Answer showcase his ample talent as a performer as he pulls out some pretty slick dance moves. The youngest act on the bill today Blacc’s soulful funk comes with a very retro, early-‘70s twang, which for a moment feels completely authentic.

An extraordinarily long wait in a queue for food (at trucks that are running out of food) sees quite a few punters miss out on most of Common’s set. A wild version of The Light ahead of Kingdom brings down what seems an energetic set.

There is a building sense of anticipation for the much-revered D’Angelo, whose enormous reputation has been built around just two studio albums that were released 15 to 20 years ago. In recent years there’s been a lot of talk about a comeback album, which is yet surface. Surprisingly, D’Angelo comes on in a swirling haze of psychedelic guitars and deals a cover of Funkadelic’s heavy duty, grinding groove Miss Lucifer’s Love. Always drawing comparison to Prince, it feels like D’Angelo has been listening to 3rd Eye Girl and the heavier guitar sound that Prince has been dealing for the past 12 months. Left &  Right soon emerges as does D’Angelo’s soft, velvety croon. As his ridiculously talented band get mellow, the outfit starts to drop neo-soul vibes that recall the kind of soft and wet grooves of Prince’s first album For You, but with a slightly more experimental edge. Angie Stone helps out on Lady but it’s a stunning version of Untitled (How Does It Feel?) that leaves astonished fans gasping. Unfortunately D’Angelo’s set is so teasingly short that it fails to deliver satisfaction.

Maxwell draws the ladies close to the stage. And a few of them claim they have been waiting almost 20 years to see him in action. Right from the get-go, when he wants to Get To Know Ya, Maxwell slides into a sexed-up falsetto that seems to take quite a few punters to some kind of fantasyland. The dude is one seriously smooth operator. As we watch smoke billowing across close-ups of goose bumps on presumably female flesh on the screen at the back of the stage, Maxwell seduces with the intimacy of his silky soft vocals. His cover of Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work brings tears to the eyes of the woman next to us, who then confides that she walked up the aisle to this song. Her husband is similarly emotional. Maxwell is thrilled to be here, humbly acknowledging that he is “just an old man trying to make a comeback”. He brings the first edition of Soulfest down on a stylish high.