Album review: Leon Bridges’ Coming Home is pure nostaligia for the soul

Coming Home by Leon Bridges.

Coming Home

Leon Bridges

Columbia

Three stars

Everything about American soul man Leon Bridges induces nostalgia. The 10 songs on this album, all wistful soul and R&B time warps, are caressed with Stax-era horns and Memphis soul-guitar grooves.

If you added them to a Sam Cooke and Bill Withers music collection and played them in shuffle mode, you wouldn’t find all that much of a difference. That’s the album’s strength and its weakness. When it works, such as in the title track opener, the shuffling doo-wop beat and Bridge’s sweet croon can warm the most cynical of souls.

That sweet saxophone bridge in the driving Smooth Sailin' is close to irresistible and can inspire a brief bout of euphoric dancing. However, when the same classic techniques are reproduced throughout the remaining eight songs, the album descends into a game of spot the influences. Some identity is found in the touching Lisa Sawyer. Bridges drops the laboured affectations here and seems to sing from a deeper place in this ode to his mother. A bit more of that, and talk about him being the next soul star could begin to be justified.