Revisiting, revising
Jamie Lidell - When I Come Back Around - Live feat. Jimmy Edgar
So, it seems like ages ago but just over a year ago I posted about a young master of blue-eyed-soul from the UK named Jamie Lidell. In fact, it was this very same song, in album-version form. Originally, the song comes from his full-length, Multiply, released by the stalwart UK electronics label, WARP records.
Since that time, Lidell has had his music featured on grup-favorite Grey's Anatomy, he has released a remixes album, called Multiply Additions (which came out this week actually), and has been touring like crazy. I mean like CRAZY. Playing all over the place. I was fortunate enough to have seen him this Winter at Rothko, where I had my mind not-so-delicately blown. See, Lidell came out in a shiny robe, and sang - I mean really sang - some sweet soul into the mic, all the while fiddling with some electronics on stage, seemingly without much effect. Then he launched into more songs, but this time, he started be beatboxing, and used the gear on stage to loop his voice, chop it into bits and feed it back to us. It was pretty amazing listening to him twist his songs into entirely new, freaky live versions, and was quite an experience overall.
A lot of other people I talked to loved what Lidell did live, and probably just as many hated it. They just didn't get into it at all. Most of those folks also don't get that into electronic music in general - they wanted more soul-croon-Lidell - to which I say "fair enough," you know, to each his own and all that.
SO, with that in mind, here is Lidell, doing "When I Come Back Around" live, beatboxing and all that, with the electronic-tweekery of Detroit's Jimmy Edgar (who I also featured here, back in January of this year) backing him up. I'm definitely jealous of the folks who got to see and hear this happen (at last month's Bowery Ballroom show here in NYC). As I said before, Jamie Lidell live performances seem to make audiences pretty divisive, which is fine by me - love it or hate it, that's up to you. I happen to think he's on some genius-level-shit myself.
Are you feeling it too? Then buy Multiply and Multiply Addtions from iTunes, or from WARP's download-store Bleep, or get them in physical form via your favorite indie retailer.
I'm off to surf-camp, so I'll catch you cats later.