Soul-Eyed Blues:
When was the last time you found yourself speaking of Boz Scaggs, Michael McDonald, and Michael Franks, all in the same breath? For me, it was this morning, as I listened to the new album from James Lee Murray.
Mr. Murray seems to have sprung fully formed from the soulful side of the 70s tracks with a made-for-vinyl sound heard all-too-rarely across today’s thinned out airwaves, and his blue-eyed blues are a welcome injection to an otherwise barren soul landscape.
For listeners of a certain age, the laid-back roads Murray traverses might conjure James Taylor at his bluesiest, Bobby Caldwell at his smoothest, or even Stevie Winwood circa 1977. But don’t be fooled by the chill exterior. There is dirt and depth here, and in between those slinky Rhodes-powered grooves lurks a potent bluesman with a sly flair for both salvation and seduction.
As to the procession of names already populating this review, it’s true that James Lee Murray is one of those artists whose record collection you can’t help but envy—listening to him makes you appreciate whoever it was that raised him.
To experience Murray’s new release is to take a journey down seductive byways, and much of the trip’s laid-back charm emerges from its smallest moments—the slightly irregular creak and break of Murray’s effortlessly fading falsetto, the funky 16th note percolation of an octave baseline under a passing chord, the skip and pop of a side-stick breakdown, a lyric that stays with you just a little longer than you expected:
free as a jellyfish kite
out of body, out of water.
the gulls tried to give her advice,
told her the sky wasn’t made to hold her
she said, i don’t need your advice,
i’d rather do it wrong then admit that you’re right
This is soul-blues poetry at both its finest and its strangest, and in this way, he’s as much the child of Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield as he is a mendicant at the altar of Sam Cooke. And by
the way, when Murray hits the word “born” mid-song, expect to get those Sam Cooke chills just like I did.
Returning to the theme of little moments mattering for a moment, there is a moment in the solo piano tour de force that is “I’m Home” where the rolling gospel chords beneath Murray’s supple hands break clean for a moment, and a lone hand clap fills the space with its solitary pop. It is a moment so genuine, so soulful, so alive, that the air around the song is literally charged with its energy.
Those gospel chords are felt throughout the album, underpinning the Marvin Gaye-like elegance of “Neutrinos” with a touch of Al Green, or threading a trace of The Staple Singers into the sonic quilt of “Resonate.” But it’s on “I’m Home” that Murray takes you all the way to church.
If it’s not already clear, there is a great deal to love about this music, these songs, and this album. But above all else, it is Murray’s voice that matters most. I am so grateful to discover a singer who never resorts to histrionics to tell his story; instead, it’s his patience and restraint that draw us in into the intimacy of his reflections.
Murray wears both his heart—and his influences—on his sleeve, and because of this, comparisons to contemporary artists such as Leon Bridges are probably inevitable, but unlike Bridges, whose perfectionist retro derivations border on brazen theft, Murray is his own man. A man out of time, perhaps, but—to borrow and bend a line from one of his many poetic lyrics—we can see his soul in his eyes.
I may have called his music blue-eyed blues before, but I’ll call it soul-eyed blues forever more.