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Gay icon Jimmy Somerville may have slipped from the mainstream radar since his glory days in the 80s but a read through his biography suggests he has been as busy as ever over the years and still remains a source of inspiration and entertainment for his massive fan base.

While playing some theatre shows in Melbourne and Sydney in 2006 Somerville hooked up with producer Andrew Worboys and in 6 days recorded the basic tracks for the recently released album Suddenly Last Summer. The circumstances of the recording no doubt gave the album its title and surprisingly this is the first album of its type that Somerville has released.

The range of songs given the Somerville treatment here is impressive. The Doors, The Cranes, Deep Purple, Cole Porter, Jean Carne and Patsy Cline all get reworked around into versions often differing greatly from the originals.

The voice of Somerville is  a unique instrument. He possesses a squeal of a falsetto that is one of the purest white soul sounds around and he has the ability to switch from high energy dance to cold electronic pop to jazz and soul, seemingly with ease.

His song selection isn’t as obvious as one would expect for someone who has built a career on camp pop anthems. He takes the Bacharach standard ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’ and turns it into a brisk acoustic folk song while on ‘Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair’ he takes the traditional folk song popularised by Nina Simone and creates a smoky torch song paean to lovers. The sparseness and focus on Somerville’s voice makes it one of the standouts on the album.

Rock songs aren’t out of bounds either. Deep Purple’s ‘Hush’ is given a bluesy funk-lite treatment and even The Doors are tackled with ‘People Are Strange’. Somerville splits the song into two halves with the first a hazy slowed down swampy crawl with his voice in a surprisingly low register. Then at the two minute mark it speeds up into a polka knees up sprint before again concluding in the same smoldering way that it began.

The most obvious song choice is Blondie’s ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ (originally written by The Nerves) though he again strips it of its disco overtones and reduces it to a finger picked guitar and piano ballad. It suits the song perfectly with Somerville’s soul intonations and effortlessly sweet tone and he brings a sadness to the song that is absent from Debbie Harry sung version. It is rare that a cover version can differ so radically from the original and still be as good.

Somerville has done himself a great service by releasing this album as it should give him a wider respect from those who write him off as merely a pop singer defined by his sexuality. He has honoured the songs he has sings on Suddenly Last Summer and for the most part given them a new and interesting perspective. For that he should be given credit.

Reviewed for The Dwarf.