Deep Throat Choir: Be OK review – cool covers and curveballs

Blame Glee or Gareth Malone, but you can barely move these days for community choirs. Life-affirming they may be for the participants, but for the listeners, yet another a cappella version of Lean on Me can get wearisome. Enter all-female Deep Throat Choir, who have been refining their drums-and-vocals arrangements under the direction of musician Luisa Gerstein since 2013. The east London collective’s first record consists mostly of cover versions, tackling Björk and Amy Winehouse with cool understatement, while throwing up tasteful curveballs from Sylvan Esso and Electrelane. But a little more vocal wildness in the finale of MK’s 1995 house banger, Burning, and their own composition, Be OK, really distils their full-throated joy.