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Neneh Cherry is back with a vengeance with the release of her new album The Cherry Thing.
The 48-year-old Raw Like Sushi singer said: “I feel like I’ve woken up. It’s like I’ve been in a weird sleep for a long time and now I’m awake. It felt like it was time.”
Her 1989 million-selling album Raw Like Sushi produced the hit singles Buffalo Stance and Manchild, expertly capturing England’s emergent club culture and hip-hop and rap crossover into pop music consciousness.
Neneh Cherry’s 7 Seconds, a searingly emotive duet with Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, was a global monster in the Summer of 1994.
Since then she has gone AWOL, popping up for a couple of albums with cirKus, a collective featuring her daughter Tyson and husband Cameron McVey (aka Booga Bear),and the odd guest spot on other artists’ records, the most high-profile being Gorillaz’ Demon Days. Her last solo LP was Man in 1996.
The Cherry Thing, 50-odd minutes of pulsating avant-jazz that contorts songs by the Stooges, MF Doom, Suicide, Ornette Coleman and more is the result of an encounter with Nordic trio the Thing.
Neneh said: “I feel like I’ve woken up. It’s like I’ve been in a weird sleep for a long time and now I’m awake. It felt like it was time.”
The Buffalo Stance singer said she took time out to reflect on her career path as an artist: “You come to these thresholds in your life where you need to remember why you do what you do, to reconnect with yourself. When I look back at something like Raw Like Sushi, I think I was very much in the right place at the right time. But it was almost a weird domino effect, where one thing led to another.
She added: “Now I feel more like I’m achieving and thinking about what I want. I’m hungry for it and there’s a part of me that feels like I’ve just started. It’s going to be interesting to roll it out there again.”
The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound) is out on LP, CD and digital on June 18.
Neneh Cherry LIVE:
SATURDAY 30/06/ Ljubljana Jazzfestival/Slovenia
SUNDAY 01/07/ Porgy & Bess/Vienna/Austria
MONDAY 02/07/ Lucerna Music Bar/Prague/Czech
TUESDAY 03/07 Zaporochye/Ukrain
THURSDAY 05/07/ Trænafestivalen/Træna/Mo i Rana/NO
SATURDAY 07/07/ Kongsberg Jazzfestival/N (the thing + Augusti Fernandez and Peter Evans)
TUESDAY 10/07/ Copenhagen Jazzfestival/Denmark
THURSDAY 12/07 Moriska Paviljongen/Malmö/Sweden
FRIDAY 13/07 Nefertiti/Göteborg/Sweden
SUNDAY 15/07/ Village Underground/London
MONDAY 16/07/ MelkwegAmsterdam/Netherlands
TUESDAY 17/07 Karlsruhe/Germany
WEDNESDAY 18/07/ A l´arme Festival/Berlin/Germany
FRIDAY 20/07/ Molde Jazzfestival/Molde/NO
SATURDAY 21/07 Konfrontationen/Nickelsdorf/Austria
SUNDAY 22/07 Girona/Spain
MONDAY 23/07/ San Sebastian/Spania