Music Review: Jamie Lidell, 'Jamie Lidell'

“Jamie Lidell” uses the Minneapolis funk of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and the “freestyle” and “new jack swing” subsets of 1980s R&B as its starting point, then embellishes beyond the big beats and syncopated keyboards. The opening “I'm Selfish” and “Big Love” sound like throwbacks at first, but Lidell executes the grooves with an ear toward modern hits — it's the kind of confidence that comes from using pop music's history to predict its future. Lidell can veer toward dissonance and atonality — especially on third track “What a Shame” and the Tom Wait-by-way-of Parliament groaner “why_ya_why” — but he gets his groove back quickly, singing like a man possessed on the vocoder-fueled “Do Yourself a Faver” and “You Naked.”

There does not seem to be the kind of machinery in place that would make Lidell a star, but “Jamie Lidell” is packed with ear candy, especially the can't-lose stretch of five songs that begins with “Blaming Something” and ends with the album's finale, the smashingly funky “In Your Mind.” Lidell probably changes gears too much for mainstream taste, but that's what makes “Jamie Lidell” such a killer exploration of dance-floor possibilities: you never know his next step.

— George Lang