Thursday night at the stroke of midnight – technically Friday morning – the highly anticipated debut album Angels & Queens by Gabriels dropped. The big hand on the clock didn’t get to 12:01 am before I was already awash in glory from the sounds of the opening track Offering (I’d again get awash in glory from a later track Glory). Forty-nine minutes later, at the end of the final track, Mama, I felt I had completed a spiritual journey throughout the Land of Soul where I visited Classic Soul, Disco Soul, Gospel Soul, Psychedelic Soul, Funk Soul, R&B soul, and some new area of Soul that Gabriels is busy constructing.
Other five-star reviewers felt the same (one said the album broke their rating scale):
- As good as popular music gets (louderthanwar.com).
- A record to knock you off your feet (NME).
- A neo-soul record for the ages (whynow.co.uk).
It’s now de rigueur that any mention of Gabriels cites that two years ago Elton John called their astonishing first single, Love and Hate in a Different Time, “one of the most seminal records I’ve heard in the last 10 years”. Elton saw his assessment validated by Gabriels’ incendiary set at the Glastonbury Festival. And then he further validated it by inviting Gabriels’ lead singer Jacob Lusk to join him for his televised Glastonbury show seen by over 7 million viewers. “Hard to avoid the feeling that a star was being born in front of our eyes,” said the Daily Mail.
Back to the album. Angels & Queens shifts between irresistible soul grooves (Offering, Angels & Queens) and spacy, improvisational ballads. Towards the end, it nearly tears the roof off the sucker with the trio of Love and Hate in a Different Time, Glory, and Great Wind – the latter beginning with a simmer before finally boiling over – and then thankfully brings our blood pressure back down to safe levels at the end with Mama.
The lead singer in the band often gets the most credit for the band’s sound, and ex-American Idol contestant (5th place 2011[1]) Jacob Lusk, 36, is the most noticeable force. His agility to gracefully shift between bold baritone and skyrocketing falsetto evokes the late, great Sylvester. And during a stretch of album ballads, there are the consecutive feather-strokes of Professional and We Will Remember, where Jacob first gives echoes of Billie Holiday and then a jazzy, trippy improv on Streisand’s The Way We Were.
However, the eclecticism of Gabriels’ sound is a diverse group effort, as it includes the contributions of a film composer and violinist, Ari Balouzian, and a video director and keyboardist, Ryan Hope. Most, if not all, of the songs on Angels & Queens have a cinematic quality. And Ari’s use of strings recalls producer Norman Whitfield’s work with the Temptations during their Psychedelic Soul era.
Angels & Queens is sophisticated popular music. The album is rapturous when it’s hot and it’s mesmerizing when the heat is turned down. At times, it will make you outwardly express enthusiasm, and at others, it will make you turn deeply inward. Angels & Queens’eclecticism may not work for some listeners, which is understandable. But this is the kind of record that will continually surprise you with each listen. Like a fine bottle of wine, its flavors will enhance with age. I was looking forward to this album for two years. I’m sure I’ll be excited about putting it on two years from now.
[1] The year of the country kids Scott McCreery and Lauren Alaina.
Ray's Musings 