It’s always great to see new music from Joe Lington appear in the review pile. Why? Well, because what he does is not only sonically interesting and musically diverse, but the songs are also brilliantly constructed and well thought out. I know that it should be a given thing that anyone aiming for a career as a songwriter can write songs, but the modern pop age has shown us otherwise. Joe Lington is a reminder of just how good pop music can be.
Although to call the songs that make up She, his latest album merely pop music is to sell it a bit short. Very short, in fact. Okay, this is pop in its broadest and most creative sense of the term, but it is pop that has absorbed and assimilated all manner of other sounds and styles, old-school soul, rap, R&B, dance, funk…and more besides.
Pinkeen kicks things off with a neat blend of street-wise, urban R&B with all the hip-hop trimmings. But as soon as that short, sharp, and shockingly good piece fades out, Move Your Body seems to be something more in keeping with a progressive soul sound. Oh Yeah has a touch of the disco-infused dancefloor about it, and What Do You Do reminds us that this is an artist who can perform in a number of languages.
Throughout the album, the title track is a five-episode spoken word narrative that weaves its way through the more conventional songs, linking perhaps the poets of the conscious soul movement era with the modern age, music with poetry, art with social commentary. This shows that there is still room to create new and interesting musical forms and that there is a need for music that means something, that has something to say.
She is a mercurial album, not only moving between many styles but ripping the rule book up altogether and merging the boundaries between music and storytelling, prose and lyricism.