Fly for a white guy

From the first notes on Jim’s radiant opener “Another Day,” you’ll wish you were nodding along to it on your cranked-up car speakers on the first hot day in June. Jamie Lidell, everyone’s favorite British white knob-twiddler-turned-soul-singer, absolutely loads on the sunshine in this song, complete with handclaps and ooh-oohs, doing his best Curtis Mayfield impression in his more traditional follow-up to the spastic Multiply.

Is it lampoon? Is it reverence? Who cares?

Yes, there is an argument to be made that we should just dig up our Stax records and give them a listen, rather than listen to Lidell’s replica. But how could we justify ignoring smooth, pitch-perfect soul like Lidell’s? He can do it all, from bending his voice through acrobatics on a Little Richard rocker (“Where D’You Go?”) to acting as howling bandleader of a straight-up Soul Train homage (“Figured Me Out”).

Lidell hangs up the electronica blips and buzzes of Multiply in favor of a cleaner, slicker sound. But just because it recedes behind fuzzy funk bass lines and electric piano doesn’t mean that Lidell’s electronic orchestral mastery is any less. On the frantic “Out of My System,” Lidell fills out the song with a few moments of electronic dissonance and distorted handclaps, which allows the return of his voice on the next track, “All I Wanna Do,” all the smoother.

Still, even on the glitchiest track, “Figured Me Out,” Lidell transforms his cacophonous distortion into a late-’70s disco-funk structure, banging beats one and three to get all the leisure suits out on the floor. Lidell, in showcasing his own great voice, has forced his convulsive and compelling electronic skill to take a traditional backseat. When he embraces these older works in glossy, perfect production, I do wonder where the Jamie Lidell in all this is.

None of these tracks are “bad,” even with their sub-Hannah Montana lyrical content, but whether you like this record will depend on whether you find Lidell’s brand of reverent reproduction charming or stomach-churning.

As for me, I go by Duke Ellington’s old adage: If it sounds good, it is good.

And, damn, it sounds good.