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The Playlist VibeZ

Fifteen tracks from a band-and-singer project that produced one of the most overlooked soul albums of the last decade.

Eric-Roberson-Playlist-Retreat

The PLAYlist featuring Glenn Lewis

Glenn Lewis is a Toronto singer whose 2002 single "Don't You Forget It" made him briefly one of the most promising voices in R&B, and whose career thereafter was derailed by the usual combination of label politics and bad timing. He has one of the most agile high tenors in the music, and for fifteen years it went mostly unused.

The PLAYlist is the project that changed that: a musicians' collective who built a full album of live-instrument soul around him, released in 2017 as Chasing Goosebumps. It is exactly the record his voice deserved and almost nobody heard it.

The playing is the point. This is a band record in the seventies sense — real bass, real drums, horn arrangements, and a singer given room to do what he does rather than a track to fit into.

What to listen for

"CHASING GOOSEBUMPS" is the title track and the best introduction — a slow build that gives Lewis space to climb, which is what he was always best at.

"DIE EMPTY" opens the record and is the most ambitious arrangement on it.

"1995" is the most nakedly nostalgic thing here and the most affecting, and "FIRST TIME AGAIN" works the same territory.

"STONE COLD" and "DEFEATED" with Dayne Jordan are the two that bring a rapper in, and both are better for it — the contrast between Jordan's flat delivery and Lewis's falsetto is the record's best trick.

"TAKE MY TIME" is the smoothest, "SUPERMAN" is the most anthemic, and "LULLABY" is the quietest.

"DISTRACTION" with Rich Medina is the DJ's inclusion, and "MR. GRUMP" and "KELO AND KAIDI BE SNORING" are the domestic, funny ones — a reminder that this is a record made by grown people about grown lives.

Go deeper

Chasing Goosebumps (2017) is the album and it works far better heard whole than shuffled.

Glenn Lewis's World Outside My Window (2002) is the debut that should have made him a star, and it is worth hearing to understand what was lost. For the wider tradition of band-backed contemporary soul, follow The Foreign Exchange, Kings Go Forth and Durand Jones & The Indications.

Why it deserved better: a great voice with nothing to sing over is one of the more common tragedies in this music, and this project is the correction. Real players, written arrangements, and a singer finally given room to climb — which is exactly what his instrument was built for and exactly what fifteen years of label politics had denied him.

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