Coultrain – The Wanderer review

Artist: Coultrain
Title: The Wanderer
Label: Record Breakin US
Genre: Broken Beat/Nu Jazz
Format: Digital
Buy From: Juno Download

Coultrain returns with his first solo release since his debut album, The Adventures of Seymour Liberty. Like his full length, “The Wanderer” is intelligent, futuristic soul music, straight out of St. Louis.

Building on the success of his self-released debut, Coultrain is back with help from multi-instrumentalist producer Cedric Noah, better known as  I,CED of the Hawthorne Hunters. The pair collaborated on a single with Coultrain last year but returns now to produce both of these new tracks. “The Wanderer” continues to merge his vintage sounding vocals with contemporary lyrics to devastating effect. With a more mellow rhythm than the latter of the two tracks, it will appeal to soul fans of old and the new, modern soul heads in equal fashion. Both songs keep the spaced out, 70s soul feel that often signifies Coultrain’s involvement, but “Balancing Act” is a more modern sounding, upbeat number with a shuffling percussion and layered vocals.

These two tracks serve as both an epilogue to The Adventures of Seymour Liberty, the first part of a trilogy, but also as a prologue to the next instalment of the series. The next part of the Seymour Liberty trilogy will be released by Fresh Selects later in the year and this release acts as the perfect linking track between chapters.

With a growing back catalogue of impressive work and further release scheduled for the future, there is no doubt that this man from St. Louis is set to be around for a while. As we can only look forward to what the next part of his story has to offer, we are lucky enough to have these two brilliant offerings to bridge the gap.

Review: Tom Jones