Pastel Blues

Nina Simone could make a song sound as though its centre of gravity had changed. On Pastel Blues, familiar material is slowed, tightened or stripped back until every pause and inflection becomes consequential. Released in 1965, the album is only nine tracks long, yet it moves through blues, folk material, spiritual intensity and stark social commentary with no sense that Simone is merely interpreting a repertoire. Once a song enters her hands, its emotional proportions become hers.

Sessions took place in New York during 1964 and 1965 with producer Hal Mooney. Its period was marked by profound loss around Simone: her friend Lorraine Hansberry died in January 1965, while Malcolm X was assassinated the following month on Simone’s 32nd birthday. That context does not turn every performance into biography, but it sharpens the gravity already present in the music.

“Be My Husband” opens with handclap-like percussion and Simone’s voice exposed against a spare, insistent pattern. “Strange Fruit” is treated with devastating restraint, refusing any need to embellish the horror of the song’s subject. Then comes “Sinnerman”, the ten-minute traditional piece arranged by Simone that closes the album in a completely different register. Piano, percussion and repeated vocal phrases gather momentum until the performance seems less like a conventional song than an act of pursuit. The acceleration makes its spiritual drama physical.

Simone is joined by musicians including guitarist Al Schackman, Rudy Stevenson on guitar and flute, bassist Lisle Atkinson and drummer Bobby Hamilton, but the record’s defining instrument remains her control of tension. She can sound commanding without raising the volume, or make repetition more unsettling each time it returns. Pastel Blues has subsequently been recognised as one of the strongest albums of the 1960s, but reputation is almost beside the point when the performances remain this immediate. Listen to the silences as carefully as the notes. Simone’s authority often lies in exactly how long she makes you wait.