June Evans vinyl

In the early 1980s, boogie chanteuse June Evans released a handful of singles on tiny, mostly New Jersey-based labels. Three decades on, those impossible-to-find gems are amongst the most sought-after synth-soul and electro-boogie records around. You'll find a couple of those singles - most notably the brilliant "If You Want My Loving", which appears in both vocal and instrumental variations - on this belated debut album, which is mostly made up of previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1981 and '83. While there are a few synth-heavy club jams scattered throughout (see the sparkling '80s soul goodness of "Like It Or Not", which was produced by D-Train's Hubert Eaves III), it's an altogether jazzier and more soul-fired set than you'd perhaps expect. Crucially, though, the quality threshold remains impressively high throughout.