Now here's a reinvention. Young London band Childhood's first album, Lacuna, released three years back, was a somewhat indistinct record, sounding like a melange of the Stone Roses, Shoegaze, and countless other British guitar bands from the past thirty years. Their second album, Universal High, is certainly not that. Instead it's nothing less than a seventies soul record, with Curtis Mayfield the most obvious inspiration, Shuggie Otis, Marvin Gaye and Gil Scott Heron are there in the mix too .
A lot of it works. They don't fall into the obvious traps and drift into Jamiroquai territory. They're helped by a wonderful production by Ben H. Allen III and the fact that the record was made in his studio in Atlanta, Georgia, probably helped too. It's all slinky, funky grooves and honeyed vocals. Although there's occasionally a hipster-ish element to proceedings, (which sometimes turns me off slightly), it's obviously heartfelt and the album certainly sounds timely on a Sunday morning as summer winds down towards its end.
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