- Label
- Polydor
- Release date
- 1st June 2009
- Genre
- Soul
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Mark Ronson’s soul-loving sideman swaggers centre stage.
Born in Australia to English parents but raised in America, Daniel Merriweather is best known for his velvet croon through the Smiths’ Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before on Mark Ronson’s Version album.
Ronson is again in the producer’s chair for this, Merriweather’s debut album, and his typically uber-slick arrangements and retro-soul stylings are clearly intended to make the soulful singer as ubiquitous on radio networks as Amy Winehouse.
It won’t do that because Merriweather lacks the edgy glamour and idiosyncratic songwriting genius of Winehouse, but nevertheless his tremendous vocal and Stevie Wonder-influenced funk licks lift him way above plodders such as James Morrison.
The opening For Your Money and Impossible glow with a rare radiance, rapper Wale ups the righteous indignation levels on the anti-war Change and Water & A Flame (featuring Adele) is heartbreak incarnate. A hugely promising debut from a star-in-waiting.
More to try:
Mark Ronson: Version
Stevie Wonder: Songs In The Key of Life
Fine Young Cannibals: The Raw & the Cooked
