Take Me to the Alley
| Take Me to the Alley | ||||
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| Studio album by Gregory Porter | ||||
| Released | May 6, 2016 | |||
| Recorded | Fall 2015 | |||
| Genre | Jazz | |||
| Label | Blue Note | |||
| Producer | Gregory Porter, Kamau Kenyatta | |||
| Gregory Porter chronology | ||||
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Take Me to the Alley is the fourth studio album by Gregory Porter. It was released on May 6, 2016 through Blue Note Records. It earned Porter a 2017 Grammy Award nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.
The album was recorded in New York City in the fall of 2015. Porter worked alongside producer Kamau Kenyatta, with whom he first worked in the mid-1990s when he was a student at San Diego State University Porter observed: "Kamau has been most instrumental in taking what I have and refining it... he's been great at offering encouragement to what I already have artistically."
Writing in The Guardian Alexis Petridis said:
... for all its easiness on the ear, – and there are moments when listening Take Me to the Alley feels like being mugged by a syrup sponge pudding – there’s something weirdly uncompromising about Porter’s music. He doesn’t bother with glossy production: Take Me to the Alley sounds fantastic, but that’s down to the warm spontaneity of an album that seems to have been recorded in six days. Nor does he dabble in radio-friendly pop covers – no scat-singing interpreter of the Coldplay songbook he. His own compositions proudly display his gospel roots – not the first genre you’d think of flaunting were you desperate for mainstream success. The title track offers up a parable about the second coming of Christ, its sternness at odds with the pacific piano playing and Alicia Olatuja’s pillowy backing vocals; "In Heaven" undercuts the small hours loveliness of its muted trumpet with a lyric by Porter’s cousin about death and redemption.
All songs written by Gregory Porter, except where noted.
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