Soul Express CD Review
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COOL MILLION
Going out Tonight
UK Expansion, 2008
1) Naughty Girl 2) Pullin' Me Back 3) Make Me Yours 4) Lift You Up 5) Damn Beautiful
6) Leave Me 7) Closer 8) Walk Away 9) Everything Ain’t Everything 10) Pride
11) Get Up on the Floor 12) Going on the Tonight 13) Musiq 14) Give Me My Love
15) It’s Too Late
Many of the recent retro-soul releases seem to revise the sounds of the ’60s or early
’70s, but the Danish-German collective Cool Million have set their clocks back
to the middle of the Reagan era.
The two masterminds behind the project are Frank Ryle, a Danish soul aficionado
and editor of the Soulportal.dk web site, and Rob Hardt, a German musician
who has remixed such household names as Chaka Khan and Keith Sweat and
produced Donald McCollum’s solid debut album U Don’t Want My Love in 2006.
Incidentally, McCollum appears here as a vocalist on the Somebody Else’s Guy–inspired
feel-good number Get Up on the Floor.
As the title suggests, the album mainly contains melodic, club-friendly uptempo cuts.
None of them is a total dud, but I can’t say there’s much variety between them.
The slow groove of Everything Ain’t Everything offers a welcome change of pace.
Ironically, for me the standout cuts are those which are unashamedly based on eighties hits.
Pride uses Hangin' on a String by Loose Ends and No One’s Gonna
Love You by The S.O.S. Band, Walk Away is built on
Intimate Connection by Kleeer, and Damn Beautiful seems to rework
Mtume’s Juicy Fruit or C.O.D. The vocal performances
(courtesy of Aaron Washington, Eleana Young and Laura Jackson) are,
as they are throughout the album, adequate if not particularly stirring.
The CD closes with its only straighforward cover version, a take on Carolyn King’s
’70s pop classic It’s Too Late, this time set to a synth-bass that reminds me of
Fatback’s Spread Love.
As a whole, the album is well done and entertaining, and heartily recommended if
you wish to take a trip back to 1984.
-Kimmo Heikkinen
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