Say She She live review: Bringing disco euphoria to Leeds
We all grow up to become the things we despised as teenagers, and if my 12-year-old self could see me beaming with excitement at the thought of going to a disco gig, he would be disgusted. After all, in those early years I had been a devotee of punk rock, the antithesis of the glitz and glamour of disco. Thankfully, once I quickly realised that pretty much everything John Lydon says is rubbish, I began to explore the vibrant worlds of disco, funk and soul, never looking back. This spiritual journey through music eventually led me here, on the road to Leeds with the undeniable brilliance of Say She She on the stereo.
As I trundled through the perpetual drizzle of the post-industrial towns and villages that pepper the road between Bradford and Leeds, I couldn’t help but feel as though disco music didn’t suit my surroundings. The soot-stained stone of West Yorkshire seems to endear itself more towards gloomy post-punk than the optimistic euphoria of disco, but then I thought back to my recent chat with the three women at the helm of Say She She, who taught me of the universal appeal of disco music.
“It’s happiness in the midst of,” Nya Gazelle Brown had told me, and it was these words that echoed through my mind as I pulled up to Project House, Leeds.
Situated on an Armley industrial estate, betwixt a sex shop and a microbrewery, Project House was certainly an unlikely setting for a sold-out show by the Brooklyn-based disco giants. This was my first time visiting Leeds’ newest venue, and my immediate reaction was that it lacked the character of many other venues in the city. With whitewashed walls and a cold atmosphere, in addition to a crowd populated largely by over-40s, it seemed as though Say She She had a fairly difficult task ahead of them in terms of bringing some energy to a cold Tuesday night in Leeds.
Thankfully, any doubts over their ability to energise a crowd were immediately quelled as their backing band emerged from the darkness, introducing Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham and Nya Gazelle Brown to the stage. Bedecked in leather, the trio arrived to thunderous applause and wasted no time displaying their vocal excellence. With their rising intensity and danceability as the setlist progressed, the ageing ravers and old disco fans in the crowd were gradually brought on side, with subtle sways soon giving way to Saturday Night Fever-esque dance moves.
Even myself, whose dance moves are usually restricted to Northern Soul dad-dancing, about as wooden as my surname would imply, found myself imbued with the dormant spirit of John Travolta. Although the sold-out crowd provided little room for manoeuvre and, therefore, limited dance space, it did not seem to affect the mood of the crowd, which reflected the beaming smiles of the trio on stage.
Looking past the innate danceability of the music, the thing that struck me most about Say She She was how striking their voices were. Of course, they sound incredible on studio recordings, as you would expect from three classically trained singers, but somehow, their vocal talents are even more unbelievable in a live setting. As the night went on, it struck me that Piya, Sabrina and Nya could be doing something as mundane as reading out the football scores, and it would still be utterly captivating.
Obviously, the vocalists who front Say She She have received their fair share of praise (and rightly so), but I was just as impressed with their backing band. The bassist, in particular, was a star of the night, delivering an endless barrage of groovy riffs that could make even Bernard Edwards blush. The backing band came into the forefront when the trio briefly left the stage, owing to a mid-set costume change, which really kicked the euphoric vibes of the night into overdrive.
Returning to deliver a variety of their best-loved tracks, I discarded the horrible-tasting non-alcoholic beer I had been sipping on in an effort to focus entirely on the music. Closing my eyes and letting the rich tones of my recent single ‘Trouble’ wash over me, suddenly I didn’t feel as though I was in a converted office block in an industrial state of Leeds; it was as though I had been transported to the vibrant land of Studio 54, awash with disco euphoria. I am certainly no stranger to the world of live music, but I truthfully cannot recall a time in which I was so captivated and affected by a vocal performance as I was while watching Say She She.
After a short encore of two tracks, Say She She eventually relinquished the control they had over the audience in Leeds, sending the masses out into the biting cold of the evening. Although I contemplated redeeming the free pint that Piya had promised me during our interview, I figured she would be fairly knackered as a result of belting out disco tunes for 90 minutes, so I, too, departed Project House.
Returning back to the wasteland where I had parked my car, my path lit by the dim signage of the sex shop opposite, I could not wipe the grin from my face or the sounds of ‘Astral Plane’ from my mind. I am sorry, teenage Ben, but I am a lover of disco, and you should be too.
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