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Elly Roberts reviews
Blue Note (Capitol Records Inc.)
- Released: February 2005
- Format: CD
- Rating: 10/10
- Cat.no.: 7243 5 97350 2 3
When, in a short period of time, you get invited to support Bob Dylan, its arubber stamp of your credentials. The man thats achieved that honour is nonother than Amos Lee.
Giving up his elementary school teachers job, and working in bars to fund hisambition, hes now finally realised his longstanding dream with his self-titledalbum on Blue Note Records.
He got his big break early last year, when he toured with songbird Norah Jones(who appears on track 1 and produced by her co-writer Lee Alexander).
With eleven deeply soulful and gorgeous tracks, it will immediately grab yourattention. Theres a subtle contemporary twist of balladry all in the mix:jazzy-soul (Keep It Tight), gospel (Give It Up), folk (Arms OfA Woman) and folk-blues (Dreamin’/Soul Suckers/Bottom Of The Barrel)- a kind of Labi Siffre meets Eric Bibb – and its sufficient enough to impressBob.
At the very heart of his compositions are memorable and melodic sojourns that scalethe depths of emotions; the usual stuff of love and friendship. Style and classrun through all the tracks, which are a delight to listen to with the formattingabsolutely perfect. Its laid back and very chilled, but it never reaches thatloungy comfort zone, though he breaks loose with Give It Up.
Vocally hes well disciplined and pitch perfect, as he delicately switches styleswith consummate ease. Instrumentally, it has lush lashings of viola, mandolin,cello, wurlitzer and the usual guitar/drums cascading over his gentle acousticguitar and singing.
Like the man says – he keeps it loose and lets it all hang out. If Norah Jonescan strike it rich with her two albums, then Amos Lee deserves a Grammy forthis remarkable debut. One suspects this could be slow burner a la Damien Rice’s“O”. Mhhh, delicious.
WeblinkAmos Lee.com
The full list of tracks included are :
1. Keep It Loose
2. Seen It All Before
3. Arms Of A Woman
4. Give It Up
5. Dreamin
6. Soul Suckers7. Colors
8. Bottom Of The Barrel
9. Black River
10. Love In The Lies
11. All My Friends
Elly Roberts passed away in 2011, but he was a man who was so passionate about all types of music and loved meeting his musical heroes, such as Mick Hucknall at a book signing at the Trafford Centre, Manchester in 2007.
A former teacher and also a music journalist, DJ and radio presenter on local community station Calon FM, plus appearances on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio 2, Elly started doing reviews for DVDfever.co.uk in 2004 and he did the majority of the CD and concerts reviews on the website.
I know also that he loved getting away for the summer to Spain and I hope that wherever he is now he is enjoying the hot sunshine and, as one of his friends has said on his Facebook page, that he is interviewing his musical heroes.