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.