Great voice fails to deliver on crossover promise
Ten years on from its inception in underground clubs, dubstep’s grip on inner-city youth is complete. Magnetic Man and their associated acts are edging the genre to the top of the charts, whilst feted artists like Katy B and James Blake have given us two great fringe records. Now Jamie Woon is set to give us a third...
Except he hasn’t. It’s barely even dubstep.
It’s all the fault of single Night Air, released earlier this year. It’s high on sensual atmospherics and produced by leading-light Burial, haunting and lingering as it moves, upping the stakes for dubstep to try something fresh. Beyond that, this is just a forgettable soul album.
What isn’t second rate is Woon’s voice- one of the most beautiful, soulful and unaffected male sounds to bother the charts in recent times. His heartbreaking lament to opportunities missed on Sorta is gorgeous, and shows why he gathered plaudits to begin with. The rest of the album’s songs just don’t match him. Middle has a great string arrangement at its core, but an overly fussy and clinical production spoils it, while songs like Spiral and TMRW sound like they belong on a late-90s R Kelly album; yes, they’re that bad.
The only other song to really have an impact is Lady Luck, an obvious choice for new single, and one that marries a more upbeat Woon vocal with a trippy and dark sampled backing. But you couldn’t call this dubstep.
His stripped-right-down version of Wayfaring Stranger is conspicuous by its absence here, and it’s a real shame: a great version with just that voice with the most simple of support. That kind of approach may have earned more plaudits, but what we’ve been left with will be forgotten the day after hearing it, as no amount of production tricks can hide a rather dull soul record by a great singer.
2.5/5
Best Tracks:
Night Air
Shoulda
Lady Luck
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