by Maxwell Cavaseno
For decades in modern history, Blue-Eyed Soul Boys from the UK have been attempting to invade us, a sort of surreal revenge for the American Revolution or something. It seems like Sam Smith is only the latest of a long line of people who when you hear the song, you’re moved to tears, only to find some gawky bad-toothed ‘lad’ standing before you shyly, like The Wizard of Oz with the curtain pulled away. “Yeah, sorry ’bout that love,” he offers, nudging the ground with his foot, nonplussed by the shock “Don’t quite fit the expectation, do I?”
Jamie Lidell was the most unlikely of these figures. Originally coming out of the British IDM electronic scene, his first album was caked in slabs of glitchy noise that resembled less Motown than the motor factories of Detroit. The glaring exception was “Daddy’s Car”, a song that seemed to fuse all of the chaos played around on other tracks to a Nine Inch Nails meets Joe Cocker style of composition. By the next album, Lidell had shorn away many of the traces of his past to forge himself into a powerful crooner, his Multiply album making him an unlikely commercial presence. After all, who expected an album so full of retro R&B-styled punchiness from Warp Records, the home of Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards Of Canada?
However, it is the third official album, 2008’s Jim that I often find myself returning to out of curiosity. Jim was the logical next step for commercial maneuvering, and without Lidell’s past, you’d be hard to find a context for how you’d file this album next to his storied electronic peers. Because unlike your average artist who’d debuted as a dance music producer before ‘finding their voice’ (see: James Blake, Moby), Lidell had developed his songwriting chops rapidly and had no problem leaving the safety of his techno-based cyborg upgrades behind. Listening back to the record now, it’s hard to imagine that this was not the work of a more storied songwriter hidden in the back annals of Memphis or Detroit who’d finally gotten his just due.
Album opener and single “Another Day” is a large slice of upbeat gospel pop, displaying greater vulnerability and hitting with a tad more swing in it’s step than Pharrell’s “Happy” really goes for. Elsewhere, “Little Bit Of Good” sounds like a hip-hop infused Stevie Wonder jam that cuts deep grooves, while the neurotic “Figured Me Out” resembles Earth, Wind & Fire gone to a darker, murkier place than memory serves. It’s not simply a journey of The History Of Soul, Courtesy Of The UK. “Hurricane” bears a garage-y shock of energy that recalls The Hives, while album closer “Rope of Sand” leans towards James Taylor or even Leon Russell territory. The whole of the album has a remarkably traditional and organic feel, that manages to never sound patronizing in the way it strives to emulate the past, rather than imitate. Tragically, it never latched on, perhaps overshadowed by the rising star of another British vocalist known for their soulful sound, Amy Winehouse.
Nowadays, Lidell still records, yet his most recent efforts find him reintroducing more experimental electronic influence besides his R&B classicism. So anyone who might jump from Jim to more recent endeavors might get thrown for a loop, and then some. But on Jim, you can still find a brilliant songwriter from the most unlikeliest of backgrounds attempting to see just how far he can stretch himself backwards musically, like a demented game of limbo set to Al Green. There’s a sense of daring here, despite the conservatism, that’s hard to find in those who seek to mine the past glories of soul music for inspiration. Maybe someday, we’ll get another record like this that feeds not only the grandiosity of R&B like so many do now, but the vitality as well.
