Hattie Whitehead

“Bloom”

Hattie Whitehead – vocals, guitar,
Tom Varrall, Graham Kearnes – guitars
Chris Pemberton –  keys
Ida Hollis, Loz Garratt, Clare Kenny – basses
Peter Adam Hill, John Reynolds – drums
Tim Whitehead – bass clarinet

A rather belated look at this debut album from singer, guitarist and songwriter Hattie Whitehead which was first released in October 2024.

“Bloom” is the first full length album release from Whitehead and follows a series of EPs including “Home” (2015), “Old Soul” (2019), “Mechanism” (2023) and the singles “In The Bleak Midwinter” (2023) and “Alive” (2024). All of these are only available digitally but “Bloom” has been released across all formats, including CD and vinyl.

I first became aware of Whitehead as a performer in June 2024 when she appeared at a Music Spoken Here event at The Marr’s Bar in Worcester fronting the band Hejira, a septet dedicated to paying homage to the music of the great Joni Mitchell.

Led by guitarist Pete Oxley the Hejira band takes its moniker from the Mitchell album of the same name and its primary inspiration from her live double album “Shadows and Light”, recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in September 1979 and released in 1980.  This featured Mitchell in the company of a band comprised of stellar jazz musicians including  guitarist and musical director Pat Metheny plus Lyle Mays (keyboards), Michael Brecker (saxes), Jaco Pastorius (electric bass) and Don Alias (drums, percussion). What an incredible line up – and it’s a sobering thought when you consider that of that all star band only Joni and Pat are still with us,  the others all having been taken far too soon.

That Worcester performance is reviewed elsewhere on the Jazzmann site and was the best attended event in the history of the Music Spoken Here series. It was a brilliant show that featured some superb musicianship from Oxley and his colleagues, including saxophonist Ollie Weston, bassist Dave Jones, keyboard player Chris Eldred, drummer Rick Finlay and percussionist Adam Osmianski.

But at the heart of the performance was Whitehead, a confident and technically accomplished vocalist who sounded remarkably like Mitchell and who inhabited Mitchell’s songs emotively and passionately, getting fully inside their lyrical complexities without the need for crib sheets. An impressive feat. She also proved to be a skilled guitarist,  complementing Oxley’s Metheny inspired lead lines superbly and constituting an important instrumental presence in the music. My review of Hejira’s Worcester performance can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/hejira-celebrating-joni-mitchell-music-spoken-here-the-marrs-bar-worcester-27-06-2024

I was hugely impressed by Whitehead’s performance with Hejira and was intrigued to learn that she was also pursuing a parallel solo career as a singer and songwriter. As luck would have it I was soon fortunate enough to catch up with her in this capacity when she was selected to support Wonder Stuff front man Miles Hunt when he played a solo acoustic show at The Regal arts centre in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire in July 2024.

This was very different as Whitehead performed her own songs solo, accompanying herself on guitar. I attended this show strictly as a fan so there is no review to turn back to. I’m pretty sure most of the material came from the then forthcoming album “Bloom”, but there may well have been songs from the earlier EPs too.

Once again Whitehead was hugely impressive as both a vocalist and an instrumentalist, and also as a songwriter. Hunt’s audience of ageing indie rock fans loved her and she made a lot of new friends that night.

I don’t just listen to jazz and I’ve been a fan of The Wonder Stuff, and by extension Miles Hunt, for some thirty five years and have seen both the band and Hunt solo on many occasions. The Tenbury show saw him romping through his impressive back catalogue with great energy and verve. He’s always been a powerful vocalist and a charismatic stage presence but his solo shows also highlight his considerable abilities as a guitarist.

I loved Hattie’s set and Miles’ set and it really was a fantastic evening with the added bonus that after the show I was lucky enough to be able to talk with both of them. There was clearly a lot of mutual respect between the performers and Miles has continued to champion Hattie’s album. They’ll both be coming back to the Regal in 2025, Hattie with Hejira on April 26th and Miles for another solo show on July 25th, although I’m not sure who will be his support act this time.

In addition to Hunt’s approval Whitehead’s music has also been endorsed by Elbow’s Guy Garvey and by Craig Charles of BBC Radio 6. She was also the winner of Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Award in 2015.

Turning now to Whitehead’s solo album and my thanks go to publicist Hannah Gould for kindly sending me a copy of the CD.

As a songwriter Whitehead is inevitably influenced by Joni Mitchell, and also by Nick Drake, having initially been introduced to the music of both artists by her parents. She also cites the inspiration of more contemporary acts such as  Wolf Alice, Kurt Vile and Angel Olson. 

Like the songs of Mitchell Whitehead’s work is rooted in personal experience, including the loss of her mother, Linda, to cancer. “Bloom”, with its deliberately optimistic title addresses Whitehead’s recovery from the grieving process, as she explains;
“On Bloom the overarching theme is discovering who I am. Of re-emerging from a period of intense grief and reassessing life from a new viewpoint as a changed person.” 

The album is produced by John Reynolds, who has previously worked with the late, great Sinead O’Connor. He also drums on some of the tracks. The musical cast also includes long time collaborators such as guitarist Tom Varrall, bassist Ida Hollis and drummer Peter Adam Hill. The album also includes a contribution from Whitehead’s father, jazz saxophonist Tim Whitehead, here playing bass clarinet.

I’ve been a fan of Tim’s playing for a long, long time, dating right back to the days of his early 1980s groups South Of The Border and Borderline. The Borderline group was one of the first professional gigs for keyboard player Django Bates. Whitehead subsequently followed Bates into Loose Tubes, the unique British big band whose brief but glorious flowering in the mid to late 80’s and early 90s helped bring to bring both of them (and many others) to greater public attention.

Tim subsequently formed a more traditional tenor sax plus rhythm section quartet and two of his recordings from the early part of the 21st century are favourably reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann, these being “Lucky Boys” (2006) and “Too Young To Go Steady” (2008). He remains active on the UK jazz scene and it’s good to hear his playing here.

Album opener” Alive” is paced by a gentle acoustic guitar chug and features an intimate vocal performance from Whitehead, the lyrical content variously, wistful, yearning and assertive. The languid pacing of the song allied to an arrangement that also features the sounds of layered vocals and keyboards imparts the piece with something of a Nick Drake quality. In an interview with Songwriting Magazine Whitehead herself said of this song;
“Alive is about wanting to experience all the highs and lows that life brings, and share the full picture with another person, rather than floating along in one dimension. It is about wanting to know the intricacies of a loved one’s personality, to be able to share your own, and to be loved and seen as you are without pretence. To me, this is the true meaning of being alive.”

Released as a single “Valentine” is a more up-tempo offering written on the occasion of Whitehead setting up home with her partner.  It explores the thoughts of family, generations and home which arose from such a move, with Whitehead commenting “in essence it’s a love song about growth, compassion and home”.
Lyrically it represents something of a follow on from the previous piece with a message of hope expressed in the chorus “this empty shell will soon be filled with us”.

“If You Hide”, initially written for a friend has become something of a “note to self”, a paean to self confidence and self belief. Another superb vocal performance is augmented by an exquisite instrumental arrangement, understated but perfectly complementing the intimate, pure toned singing. Whitehead has said of this piece;
“This song started its life as a message to a friend, encouraging them not to hide themselves away from others. ‘Nobody’s going to see you if you hide’ is the message – you won’t bloom in the way that you want to. I felt very conscious of the fact that in the short term, it is often easier to hold back, to ‘placate and keep it in,’ but this feeds a cycle of inaction and long-term suffering. As with many songs, these lyrics that started life as a message of support to a friend fast became a mantra to myself too.”.

All of the pieces to date have been highly personal and based on Whitehead’s own life experiences. “Machine” reveals a political dimension to her work as she rails against the then Tory government, the capitalist machine and the selfish and power hungry in general. A glitchy arrangement featuring pulsating synths and needling guitar provides appropriate musical accompaniment. I’d like to think that Hattie has inherited her left wing sentiments from Dad Tim, who at Loose Tubes live shows was the band’s spokesman when they demanded an end to nuclear power, waste and weapons.

“In The Rain” sees Whitehead addressing the subject of gender equality, but through the power of allegory rather than out and out sloganeering. Her righteous anger is augmented by one of the most powerful instrumental arrangements on the album.

The intensely personal “The Last To Come Along” was written for Whitehead’s younger brother Sonny and is a celebration of family. Whitehead says of this track;
 “It’s a song about acknowledging what your past and your roots are but without letting them overshadow and dominate the new person that you are”. ‘Her message is reinforced by the song’s chorus, “Without the branches, the roots, there’s no bloom.”

“Distance” addresses issues of mental health. Like the earlier “If You Hide” it’s both a message to a friend and a note to self, couched inside an arrangement featuring the sounds of gently rippling guitar arpeggios and ethereal keyboard textures, before eventually expanding into something more anthemic.

Inspired by the murder of George Floyd “Too Much To Write” addresses the subject of the political apathy of the general public. According to Whitehead “It’s about the silence that perpetuates oppression; the inaction born out of a fear of getting things wrong.” 

The poignant “Sit And Wait” was written following Linda Whitehead’s cancer diagnosis. It’s another intensely personal song and despite the beauty of the performance it still makes for pretty harrowing listening. “The song is an expression of the fear of the unknown, the worry and the loneliness of dealing with life-changing news”, remarks Whitehead.

There’s no respite in the following “You Tell Me So”, a song about Whitehead’s own struggles with depression. Despite the bleakness of the subject matter it’s still an engaging performance and features one of the most powerful instrumental arrangements on the album, with the sound of electric guitars much in evidence.

The penultimate track, “No Man’s Land” finds Whitehead coming to terms with her grief and features a piano led instrumental arrangement. She says of this song;
“There is an ancient Japanese art form called Kintsugi, where broken pottery is embraced and elevated to something even more beautiful than it previously was by repairing along the cracks with gold. This was partly what inspired the sentiment and lyrics in No Man’s Land. I find the idea that you grow around your grief really comforting. You evolve and become stronger as a result of your heartbreak. The damage leads to a much more unique and powerful beauty that is an important part of your identity, as it is with the broken pieces of pottery. “

I seem to recall Whitehead performing this song at Tenbury and talking about Kintsugi to the audience.

It’s tempting to think of these last three songs as a trilogy as they chart Whitehead’s emotional journey following her mother’s cancer diagnosis and it’s entirely appropriate that they should be sequenced together. They chronicle some pretty heavy emotions but that heaviness is leavened by the beauty of Whitehead’s singing and the quality of the instrumental performances. It all makes for serious, but not ‘difficult’ listening.

There’s a little light relief at the end of the album with “Cambrian Road Concert 1993”, a brief snippet of an infant Whitehead singing what was probably her first ever song “Fairy On My Dress”. And I assume that’s Tim doing the announcing.

“Bloom” has attracted a considerable amount of critical acclaim, and rightly so. This, allied to the phenomenal success of the Hejira project, plus the encouragement of industry figures such as Hunt, Garvey and Charles has seen Whitehead’s solo career begin to develop apace. She is still central to Hejira but is also staking her claim as a solo artist and on the evidence of this recording her reputation as a singer and songwriter of some stature can only continue to grow.

“Bloom” sees her tackling subjects ranging from the political to the intensely personal and doing so with intelligence and conviction. Her singing is technically accomplished and undeniably beautiful, with a Joni like quality, but in this context her voice is very much her own. I assume that her guitar also features in the understated but intelligent and effective instrumental arrangements, with producer Reynolds also playing an important role in the creative process.

It’s not an album that could in any way be classed as ‘jazz’, but nevertheless I count myself as a fan of Whitehead and her music. These are intelligent and highly personal songs, brilliantly performed. And who could ask for more than that.

I’m now looking forward to catching up with Hattie Whitehead when she performs in Tenbury with Hejira and shortly after that when she will actually visit my home town of Leominster on 15th May 2025 to give a solo performance at the Rankin Club. This is part of a series events promoted by Shire Folk, whose website can be found here.
https://shirefolk.co.uk/

For The Regal, Tenbury Wells please visit;
https://www.regaltenbury.co.uk

For further tour dates and to purchase Hattie Whitehead’s recordings please visit
http://www.hattiewhitehead.com

Quotes sourced from;
https://www.songwritingmagazine.co.uk/songs/bloom-hattie-whitehead

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