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TRUTH & SOUL

Lee Fields & The Expressions

Emma Jean

    Soul legend Lee Fields has re-teamed with The Expressions for new album 'Emma Jean', out on Brooklyn’s Truth & Soul Records. The successful formula seems to be two-fold: sticking to the raucous-yet-tender voiced soul music Lee Fields has always made, yet updating it - pushing the boundaries of what it can be. The result is an unmistakeable sound, something that, as 'Faithful Man' was reviewed in Pitchfork, “isn’t indebted specifically to Atlantic or Stax or Philadelphia International or Chess or Fame or Motown so much as it’s indebted to all of them at once.”

    This is why no one can call a Lee Fields record on Truth & Soul a “throwback.” It has hints, sounds, feelings that may be familiar but then there are textures, themes, and approaches that challenge the genre and stretch the sound into something else, something decidedly Lee Fields.

    To be sure, a good part of this Lee Fields sound can be chalked up to Truth & Soul producers and co-owners Jeff Silverman and Leon Michels, as well as the team of top-notch musicians involved. The artists you hear behind Lee Fields are some of the same that have backed the likes of Aloe Blacc, Sharon Jones, El Michels Affair, Adele, Liam Bailey, Ghostface Killah, and Jay-Z to name a few.

    This distinctive sound and style, a long time in the making, is again on point with 'Emma Jean'. Here, once more, the rules of the soul genre are tested, changed, and updated, showing that Fields and company have a very real command of this sound. To be sure, there are those that may be content with identifying and following the formulas of soul music’s past. But this new record–and the ones before it–show that Lee Fields, The Expressions, and Truth & Soul are more interested in where it can go next.


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