Once billed as the ‘Black Karen O’ for her scrappy, impassioned stage performances and attic-raiding personal style, Noisettes frontwoman Shingai Shoniwa seems to have mellowed of late; their recent album Wild Young Hearts shows erstwhile punk princess developing a soul. Shoniwa fills the Wino-shaped void in our lives right down to her similarly precarious hairdo, and her jazz-inflected vocals bring to mind a more adventurous version of Duffy. This is no more apparent than on new release ‘Every Now and Then’, a midtempo account of glamorous romantic regrets. But what cuts her apart from the usual faux-soul is the tenderness in Shoniwa’s voice, the melancholy hidden among the orchestral sweeps and bandwagon-jumping New Wave influences. For all their punky origins, songs like ‘Every Now and Then’ might see the Noisettes swallowed up by your parents and their middle-of-the-road daytime radio. But their seamless mix of pop-punk with surprisingly sincere soul, even occasionally lapsing into full-on show band territory, deserves as wide an audience as it is sure to attract.
