Album review: Jamie Lidell, Jamie Lidell

Producer/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Jamie Lidell’s multiple personalities are best displayed on his 2005 breakthrough second album, aptly titled Multiply – Sunday-morning soul, glitchy loop-based electronica, sly funk, and the list goes on. On each subsequent album Lidell has explored each of his musical personas in more depth. 2008’s Jim is wonderfully straightforward, spot-on piano soul; the Beck-produced Compass (2010) was a sprawling collection of dark stomp-and-glitch pop; and now comes his first self-titled record, which is packed full of witty, unselfconscious funk grooves.

Lidell, who produced the album himself at his Nashville studio, hasn’t quite gone the full Chromeo here, but it’s less sly and more unabashedly referential than he’s ever been. The production is big and fun, full of gated snare sounds, propulsive Tron synths, vocoder and fat, bubbling bass effects. He’s also more open to commercial electro sounds: there’s a drop on So Cold that sounds dubsteppy at first but mellows neatly into a deep, menacing funk groove; the same grimy, subterranean growl drags along the bottom of What A Shame, with a chorus that wouldn’t sound out of place on a self-flagellating Kanye track.

Big Love is the most ‘80s he’s ever sounded – glass-smooth jungle percussion, string synths, handclaps and falsetto choruses give it that secret-gem-on-the-Pretty-Woman-soundtrack feel. And the cheeky ‘why_ya_why’ features Lidell affecting a glowering bass timbre for the intro (“Why ya why ya why ya wanna stay at home tonight / when you got so many dresses and you got so many lives?”) before a strangely satisfying combination of muted Dixie trumpet and loping beats winds around the melody.

Though this record lacks the consistency of Jim or the surprising variety of Multiply, few artists do throwback pastiche this well or wittily.