Yesterday has always been a balm for Leon Bridges, the neo-soul singer who first became known for deliberately reviving pre-Motown R&B on his 2015 debut. Back home. With each successive record, Bridges moved further into the modern era, but his fourth album, Leonit floats on a different level: It's a nostalgia trip that hides its sentimentality beneath its heavily stylized, highly polished exterior.
Where Bridges previously framed his swing from the past as a signifier of authenticity, all the borrowed sounds Leon they are consciously hazy, playing with collective memories of shared good times. When woven together, the enveloping reverberation, soothing rhythms and melodic longing form a worn album for Bridges, a vehicle that allows him to reminisce about a comfortable respite. As he puts it on one of the album's pivotal tracks, he finds himself in a “Peaceful Place,” enjoying the sweet serenity of a bright, sunny vista.
Leon it maintains this bliss throughout the album's brief 43 minutes. Bridges created his soft response in conjunction with Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, a pair of producers who have served as Kacey Musgraves' primary collaborators since Golden Hourthe 2018 album that won the country singer a Grammy for album of the year. Golden Hour is a plan for Leonparticularly in the way reimagined vintage sounds serve as elegant touches to contemporary pop. Musgraves' blurring of genres and eras was deliberately amorphous, resulting in music that could slide seamlessly into pop and country charts. Bridge tries a similar trick Leon. Eschewing anything overtly contemporary, it nonetheless completes an album that sounds quintessentially modern as it could be split into any arrangement. it would sound equally at home in playlists designed for morning coffee or evening chills.
Bridges draws from many sources, touching on both introspective folk and pulsating pop. What unites the album is a pervasive rose-tinged nostalgia underpinned by his endless gratitude. At the start of the record, he provides a list of loves on “That's What I Love,” setting a soothing tone that's never broken. He peppers the record with hints of an unpleasant nature—beneath its sunny pulse, “Panther City” contains a suggestion of the trouble lurking in the neighborhoods surrounding his childhood home—but the sweet, rounded tone and gently sculpted arrangements give the impression that he left the darkness behind. There's no grit here, no earthiness: It's a fantasy made of fond memories and dusty old records.
Fantasy can be attractive, of course, especially when created with the loving care offered by Bridges, Fitchuk and Tashian Leon. Drawing heavily on the sunny soul of the early 1970s, the trio paint with acoustic strums, restrained funk, fuzz guitar, shimmering keys and, in the case of “Laredo,” jazzy flute. None of the songs Leon sound exactly alike—the sensual slow burn of “Ain't Got Nothin' on You” gives way to the luscious piano ballad “Simplify,” and the pastoral pleas of “Ivy” slide into the sensual “Ghetto Honeybee”—but for everyone its variety, Leon it's oddly monochromatic, even a touch insular. Blame it on studio craft so slick that it refuses to leave anyone rough in the process. the arrangements are airless, never leaving room for inconsistency or accidents. Production housekeeping does Leon they feel strangely frictionless. All the emotion mined by Bridges looking back is flattened into another textural element in the mix, a move that results in an album as comforting as a cool summer breeze — and just as ephemeral.
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