Lingers Without A Sound

Bobby Womack “Please Forgive My Heart”

There is a tendency to keep aging singers in their classic context, as if modern influences would pollute and corrupt what was amazing about their voice. Bobby Womack clearly has no interest in treating his distinct voice like a museum piece, at least not since Damon Albarn pulled him out of retirement for two excellent tracks on Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach. His forthcoming album was created with Albarn and XL boss Richard Russell, who previously collaborated with Gil-Scott Heron. Russell seems to be playing a Rick Rubin role in rehabbing the careers of aging legends, but whereas Rubin is inclined to strip things back to a prim sort of simplicity, Russell has pushed Heron and Womack to embrace a more modern sort of minimalism. The stark, slightly sputtering beats and moody keyboards of “Please Forgive My Heart” could just as easily be pulled from a James Blake or Drake record, but this doesn’t sound like the equivalent giving an old man a hipster makeoever. Womack’s voice, a highly emotive and richly human thing, sounds great in the context of cold, synthetic instrumentation. The contrast brings out the best in him, and the minimal approach to the arrangement serves to simply frame his vocal performance rather than distracting from it with too many sounds, or drowning it out in nostalgia.

Buy it from XL Recordings.