Candi Staton
London Islington Assembly Rooms
4th May, 2012

  The Assembly Rooms were not built for amplified drums, and Candi’s tight four-piece band (plus two backing singers) were often buried in a wash of echo. While frustrating, Alabama’s Soul Queen is such a superb singer that, after a while, you could ignore the rumble and lose yourself in her magnificent voice. Candi’s warm persona and emotional tone conveyed the sense that she was singing for you, opening the set with The Doobie Brothers’ Listen To The Music, followed by her R&B take on Stand By Your Man and a storming I’d Rather Be An Old Man’s Sweetheart. She continued to cherry-pick her catalogue and sang her usual Elvis covers, though she ignored the striking His Hands from 2006. Still, she brought things to a climax with raging versions of Young Hearts Run Free and You Got The Love. The encore was I Give You Praise, an apt gospel ending.