Bursting with intelligence, beauty and amazing emotional depth, Shaz Oye’s (pronounced Oh Yay!) debut, Truth According To Shaz Oye, is a knee-buckling, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raising, shiver-down-your-back inducing album that will have you hooked after just one listen. It’s that fucking good!
The most extraordinary thing about Truth is her stunning voice. Giants like Shirley Bassey and Nina Simone must’ve been on the turntable in Oye’s youth, because she has their same rare ability to plunge the cavernous depths, then resurface into heart-rending vibrato.
The songs that Oye has chosen for Truth – all self-penned, apart from an absolutely beautiful rendition “Prisoner”, the love theme from Eyes Of Laura Mars – reveal a compassionate soul who loves telling stories through her music.
‘Blood On The Bone’, for example, relates the conviction of Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen for the ‘Freedom Summer’ murders, alongside Oye’s own experiences of bigotry and prejudice, while ‘The River Wild’ tells the tale of a woman who was raped and killed by ‘The Rakes’, young aristocrats who had drinking sessions in Dublin’s Temple Bar in the 1700s.
Instrumentally, Truth is superb, Oye’s wonderful voice jazzily and soulfully accompanied by various guitars, cello, double bass, sax and piano. The album’s photography, artwork, graphic design and sleeve notes are delicious icing on the cake. If this deeply impressive first album is anything to go by, we can expect seriously great things from Shaz Oye.