Lewis Taylor
NUMB
Slow Reality
Buy via Bandcamp | Listen Below
Sixteen years ago, Lewis Taylor played a gig at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom that was supposed to signal the start of his ascent to stardom. Instead, he walked away from the pending spotlight and disappeared almost completely.
His 1996 debut album in particular gained him ardent fans of his decidedly unique take on psychedelic soul music and admiration ran deep among those who heard it. Indeed, D’Angelo included one of his songs (“I Dream the Better Dream”) on his ‘Feverish Phantasmagoria’ show for Sonos.
An interview in 2016 shed light on some of the reasons for Taylor’s withdrawal from the business, but there was no hint of a return anytime soon. Then in June 2021, news emerged out of the blue that he was readying new music alongside Sabina Smyth with whom he had worked first time around.
After such a gap in releases you might be fooled into thinking there’d be a sense of triumphalism and the opening bars of NUMB would seem to confirm these suspicions. A fanfare (of sorts) rings out, but within seconds, “Final Hour” has subsided to assume a more downbeat and humble mood—a mood that is maintained across the whole album. In reading that interview from 2016, it was clear that Taylor was a man engaged in a fair amount of soul searching about his place in the world and his past behavior. This album finds him in a similar place.
A glance at the album’s song titles accurately represents the feelings contained within—“Final Hour,” “Numb,” “Apathy” and “Being Broken” are the most appositely titled. Musically, he still sounds like precious few others—it’s an enticing mix of soul, pop and slight hints of the roots of psychedelia (blues and rock), but it knits together beautifully.
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“Numb” is a good example of the lyrical themes that litter the album, as Taylor reflects, “It’s a cliché, it’s a friend to me / and the buzzing in my brain / So removed I feel no pain / And for all I know I could be having the time of my life / … / Out of here is out of touch / And out of mind is all too much.”
Uncertainty and indecision plague his mind throughout as befits a 56-year-old on the cusp of a return to some level of fame. Noticeable also is the sense of constraint in the arrangements—occasionally, like on “Worried Mind,” the song has a palpable sense of doom, but there is no release at the song’s end. “Apathy” would sound much different without that restraint—it is not hard to imagine another artist using a gospel choir to take the song in a different direction, but the title and lyrical sense of the song demand that less is more.
NUMB is the sound of a man feeling his way back into his musical life amidst uncertainty and reticence, but it is a wholly compelling listen.
Notable Tracks: “Apathy” | “Brave Heart” | “Numb”
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