Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Sole is Back

Though Sole's last album, Live From Rome, came out only two and a half years ago (in early 2005), and Sole has been busy in the meantime, recently releasing a solo instrumental LP, under the moniker mansbestfriend, and twice touring the U.S. and Europe, he nonetheless refers to the self-titled Sole & Skyrider record as a "comeback." It's a curious term; what is a comeback exactly? Simply a return with a vengeance?

In some ways, it is a record of return—a return to rhyming, for one, particularly the complicated rhyme schemes that marked Sole's early work, a return driven by his seemingly, but not actually, discordant love of both Lord Byron and Lil' Wayne. Sole and The Skyrider Band also represents a return to the musical consistency and coherence that made the Alias-produced Selling Live Water a critical triumph (see its reviews in Rolling Stone, The Wire, and Playboy).

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