Normanton Street revives carefree summer nights with ‘Señorita’

Hip hop-soul trio Nor­man­ton Street has revived the warm sum­mer nights that so many have been miss­ing with their lat­est sin­gle, ‘Señori­ta’.

The Brighton-based group excel in mak­ing soul­ful street music, and ‘Señori­ta’ has all the sen­sa­tions of a long, con­ti­nen­tal sum­mer night that beck­ons the chance to be “total­ly carefree”.

Nor­man­ton Street front­woman Phoebe Freya told Fringe Fre­quen­cy: “The song start­ed with the groove, it made me feel like danc­ing. When I heard it, I thought about being on a night out with my friends, and being total­ly carefree.

“The lyrics are about those con­ver­sa­tions you have with your friends in the pub or in the smok­ing area of a club. You talk about noth­ing and every­thing at the same time, and have the time of your life. And it’s also about leav­ing that behind in some ways, mov­ing on from your life just being about going out with your mates every oth­er night.”

Freya’s har­mo­nious deliv­ery brings to mind con­tem­po­raries like Fati­ma and Cleo Sol, while the song’s laid­back per­cus­sion and lush horns gives it a bright, Latin feel­ing (El Michels Affair, Quantic).

Ned Archi­bong explained that the spark for this song hap­pened organ­i­cal­ly dur­ing a jam ses­sion with bass play­er Nichol­son Davids and drum­mer Ollie Fore­man. After that, the group took it up the motor­way for the Brad­ford Youth Orches­tra to add their flourish.

“It was real nat­ur­al. The Youth Orches­tra up in me and Nicholson’s home­town Brad­ford are great. They’re all in sec­ondary school, but they play their instru­ments like vet­er­ans. We fin­ished off the horns on the track with the horn sec­tion of a cool Brighton band called Count Kujo. This is prob­a­bly our song with the most musi­cians play­ing on it. A real com­mu­ni­ty vibe,” said Archibong.

Ear­li­er this year, the group released ‘All That I Have’, with help from the Brad­ford Youth Choir, a gen­tle ode to the love and close­ness that has kept peo­ple going through this sur­re­al time.

Nor­man­ton Street was set to per­form at a Live is Alive! event at the Brighton Dome this Sat­ur­day, but it has been post­poned because of England’s sec­ond lock­down.

Even though there’s been few oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to per­form at live events, the band has been keep­ing busy and stay­ing cre­ative. They’ve been post­ing pho­tos and videos from their pre­vi­ous adven­tures on Insta­gram, as well as musi­cal treats, like this amaz­ing cov­er of Lianne La Havas’s ‘Bit­ter­sweet’.

Nor­man­ton Street has released much of their back cat­a­logue on Band­camp. Fans look­ing to sup­port the band should head there.

‘Señori­ta’ is avail­able now on all major stream­ing and down­load services.

Image: cour­tesy of Nor­man­ton Street

Tags: Brighton musicians, Featured, Hip hop music, Music singles, Normanton Street, QM Records, Soul music, UK music