‘Utterly charming’: that’s the section of the CD store in which this album belongs. There are two obvious and immediate hurdles to that happening. The first is that CD stores don’t have ‘utterly charming’ sections. If they did, they’d have ‘derivative drivel’ sections, where they’d have to put Creed, Lifehouse and much of the music you find on the average WOW CD (don’t get me started on boy bands and the ‘makes baby Jesus cry’ section…).
The second obstacle is that this album is released on an independent label, so most CD stores, obsessed as they are with major labels and their marketing budgets (rather than music quality), will not carry it.
Joe Manikin is a South African artist whose management liken him to ‘Jack Johnson on steroids’. The comparison is fair up to a point. But while honest Jack and his middle-of-the-road grooves are likeable, they could also be accused of being a little samey, a little bland – nice, safe background music for a dinner party, but dull to listen to more than a few times. Not so Joe Manikin.
Sure, Let It Out is full of catchy, likeable grooves and smooth vocals. Sure it’s a warm, jazzy, funky mix of steel-string guitar, piano and lightly-brushed drums (with the occasional appearance of brass, double bass, etc), but it is so much more interesting than that. Amid the laid-back Dave Matthews-style falsettos and white-American blues-singer smoothness, Africa, in the form of a gospel backing vocals arrangement or sub-saharan guitar-picking style, saunters out occasionally, a bucket of water on its head and let’s you know what continent you’re listening to.
Every song on this album evokes a smile. Even when the title track relates Joe’s experience of watching a burn victim die in a Cape Town hospital, it is done with such warmth, such philosophical and spiritual peace, its refrain of: ‘sometimes there’s no words,’ seems positively life-affirming. Sooiside, a tongue-in-cheek track urging a drastic solution to planetary overcrowding doesn’t come across as abrasive, just gently amusing, as do the goonish ramblings on Ordinary Joe. But for the most part these are whimsical, simple songs that avoid cliché and sentimentality as easily as they dodge the bullet of pretentiousness that could so easily find its target in inoffensive singer-songwriter jazz.
I can not imagine anyone disliking this album. Take the time. Contact his management. Buy the album. If you like Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson, light jazz and even later Roger Waters (in a sunny mood), this will make a delightful addition to your collection.
[July 2008]
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