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A confession: it’s sometimes temptingly easy to churn out a review before you’ve actually heard the platter. This new solo joint from Jamie Lidell is one of these cases. Having gained a formidable reputation as an electronically enhanced hiss & bleep merchant both on his own and as part of the splendid Super_Collider, 2005’s ‘Multiply’ downsized on the margins-dwelling experimentation department and revealed the supremely talented neo-soul man who’d been lurking beneath the metallic techno sheen.
Warm, inviting and effortlessly inventive, ‘Multiply’ was strong enough to erase painful memories of Jamiroquai, Simply Red et al MOR monstrosities blue-eyed soul had been tainted with for aeons. Lidell’s astounding live incarnation, meanwhile, was even more impressive; a one-man multi-media spectacle akin to Prince reborn as a spectacularly funky cyborg with seemingly omnipotent but never showy vocal chords flexible enough to build an entire show on. With a resume like that, surely ‘Jim’ is automatically worth the full five-star jackpot, right?
Not quite. ‘Jim’ is a frustratingly polite package at first, a respectful recap of the vintage soul syllabus with little sign of either the experimental ethos that’s catapulted Lidell’s live extravaganzas to superlative-exhausting stratospheric heights or the daringly diverse references – Marvin Gaye, Prince, Fela Kuti, cutting edge electro – that made ‘Multiply’ such an uncommonly adventurous package in a genre teeming with bland pastiche.
Full of uncomplicated Motown joie de vivre, listener-friendly arrangements and lyrics steeped in every soul man cliché going, it’s almost as if Lidell, having witnessed a watered-down take of his templates swift gazillions of records of late, has decided to chuck out anything offbeat enough to alienate consumers prone to shelling out for vaguely soulful produce from the inexplicably all-conquering Mark Ronson hit factory.
Thankfully, the unflattering initial assessment turns out to be off target. Admittedly, ‘Jim’ can’t match the freshness of ‘Multiply’, but it’s hardly a case study in spirit-sapping blandness or diminishing returns either. A few tracks fail to ignite fully, but the highlights – the joyful gospel hollers of ‘Another Day’, the fatback funk of ‘Little Bit Of Feel Good’, the hyper-energetic stomp of ‘Hurricane’ and the slick hi-tech gloss of ‘Figured Me Out’, full of burping synths and unexpected tight curves – compensate for the odd dip in inspiration.
The album hits its steepest peaks when the tempo drops in smooching regions and Lidell’s jaw-dropping vocal prowess hogs the spotlight, with the mid-tempo loveliness of ‘Green Light’, the Al Green-hued ‘All I Wanna Do’ – think of ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ warmly embracing ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ – and ‘Rope Of Sand’, reminiscent of Stevie Wonder’s finest fluid 70’s balladry, all packing a multitude of honey-sweet thrills.
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