Fat-Suit with Angus Munro
Mash House, Edinburgh
Rob Adams
FOUR STARS
On the most popular night for office Christmas parties, Friday, Fat-Suit threw one of their own. The outfit with the rugby team-sized personnel department have just been on tour with their guest, singer Angus Munro, and their settings for his singing of Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake songs, as well as some of his own, took a band that’s currently highlighted in the UK’s leading specialist jazz magazine into the Pop arena with ease.
Munro is quite a character, a natural communicator whose vocal range can reach the stratosphere with something of both Jeff and Tim Buckley in that he attacks those high notes and grace notes with strength, quality of tone and conviction that heightened the excitement of the overall sound all the more.
The Jackson medley, with its right between the eyes opening killer-thriller riff, was striking in its taking no prisoners approach, song after song conveying potency, hunger and a decidedly urgent snap even when the tempo eased, and Timberlake’s Cry Me a River found Munro confidently weaving in the lyric and melody from Julie London’s unrelated and much older hit of the same name.
Munro’s own songs emphasised how well he’s been served by Fat-Suit’s arranging team as they’ve brought the same keen dynamics and imagination, allied to colourful string and brass orchestration that makes theirs such an invigorating repertoire. Both the art rock and crooner traditions, the latter most noticeable in the voice, fluegelhorn and keys gentleness of Almost Always, inform Munro’s writing and with the band in as tightly energetic and precisely punchy form as I’ve heard them, singer and instrumentalists made a truly satisfying combination.
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