Natalie Prass, Short Court Style.

Having previously covered everything from Anita Baker’s Caught Up in the Rapture and Janet Jackson’s Any Time, Any Place, to The Supremes’, well, eminently supreme Holland-Dozier-Holland doozy, You Keep Me Hangin’ On, Natalie Prass has made no secret of her apparent penchant for soul. It should thus come as no surprise to discover that the Virginian’s scintillating comeback track, Short Court Style, has something of a Memphis slink to it; what may yet startle, astound and so on, however, is the alacrity with which Prass has taken to this slightly recalculated direction: chicken-picked guitar licks carry the sass of Janelle Monáe’s sublime Make Me Feel, combining giddily with perky, contemporary R&B samples. But as was with her eponymous début album back in 2015, it’s her passerine chirp which really steals the show here, a newly evidenced versatility interwoven with incontrovertible ability to immediate, typically dramatic impact.

Short Court Style is lifted from her forthcoming sophomore full-length, The Future and The Past, which is available from June 1st via ATO Records, while Natalie Prass plays Bush Hall on April 23rd.