I’m breaking up the (very long) run of Lucksmiths albums with my usual ‘back catalogue’ reviews.
Here’s an
other CD from my generous reader/friend Andy.
I presume he gifted me this in recollection that I once taped (!) a copy of this off his vinyl (!) version.
For an album I wouldn’t have heard in more than twenty years, this sounded scarily familiar.
For the young’uns out there unfamiliar with TTD, this skinny bloke burst onto the scene with the hubris of James Brown and on overt love for 60s soul/funk.
He has a falsetto that is surprisingly masculine and a good pop ear. He does focus a little too much on the affectation and histrionics side of this genre (i.e. he often seems like his play-acting rather than truly soulful, but who am I to judge?).
I prefer TTD when he get’s up on his toes and funky. So Dance Little Sister and the middle ground of Wishing Well outrank the soppier Sign Your Name for me:
It turns out TTD has gone all Prince-like and changed his name (to Sananda Maitreya), which is a bit of a coincidence, in that I once declared my DJ name to be Terence Trent T’Owling…It never caught on.
File under: You call that hard?
Whilst this was TTD’s breakthrough album I always felt his follow up Neither Fish Nor Flesh was the true masterpiece and potentially one of the most underrated albums of all time. Though it wasn’t a commercial hit, or critical one for that matter, it showed a freedom and willingness to push things. Subsequent albums held up well – though the name change pretty much killed his commercial career.