This Was Supposed to Be the Future
The Nextmen
2007: Antidote ANTCD120
featuring Alice Russell
featuring Dynamite MC
featuring Joe Dukie and Toby Vane
featuring LSK
featuring Naledge of Kidz in the Hall
featuring Zarif
featuring Dynamite MC
featuring Joe Dukie, T Laing, and J Lindsay
featuring Niney the Observer and Toby Vane
featuring Zarif
featuring Demolition Man
featuring Sway and Bridgette Amolah
featuring LSK and Zarif
featuring Zarif and Toby Vane
Another treat Paris’s still-wonderful Radio Nova brought to my ears…I bought it because of Alice Russell’s killer vocals on “Let It Roll,” but any of Joe Dukie’s tracks would have sold me on first listen—what a gorgeous voice he has, and such heartbreakingly tender delivery! Mind you, after a slightly slow start his performance on “The Drop” gives us a taste of what would happen if Lou Rawls and K C & the Sunshine Band were contemporaneously fused today (and if you know how tasty and sexy each of those elements can be on its own in its context, you’ll realize how superbly groovy this track is and how seriously infectious it can become). Does Joe Dukie sound this great in the context of Fat Freddy’s Drop? I may need to investigate.
Really the only tracks I don’t love on this album are (unsurprisingly) the two rap ones (“Knowledge Be Born” and “Camera Tricks”), and even the latter I can enjoy if I’m in the right mood. Also, I’m not sure what the currently appropriate name is for the vocal stylings of the guy called “Demolition Man” who’s featured on a few of these tracks—the English Beat fan in me wants to say Toasting, but that’s probably considered archaic now—but anyway he’s melodic and expressive enough to keep it out of rap’s tedium and even make it quite fun. The title track, which closes the album, seems at first to be nothing special but grew on me like a disquieting nostalgia, as was no doubt its intended nature.
Comments © 2008 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.