Lee Fields - My World [Sky Blue Vinyl]

There aren't too many artists making soul music today who had a release in 1969, back when R&B was first beginning to give the drummer some. Lee Fields, however, is one such artist - or maybe he's better labeled a phenomenon. With a career spanning over 45 years, releases on a dozen different record labels, and having toured the world over with his raucous-yet-tender voice, it's mind-blowing that the music he's making with Brooklyn's Truth & Soul Records is the best of his career. With The Expressions - Truth & Soul's house band, Fields continues to evolve, enmeshed into the group's sweeping, string-laden, cinematic soul sound. Their first full-length together, My World, released in 2009, was called "one smoking mother of an old-sound soul record" and a "throwback done right" by Pitchfork. While drawing comparisons to groups like The Moments, The Delfonics, The Stylistics, and - of course - James Brown, My World has been able to create a space of it's own due to the group's desire to interpret and further the formulas of good soul music rather then parrot and imitate them.