Soulkid#1: Americanized Review
L.A. Indie Funksters Soulkid#1 Release Their Debut CD Americanized
Over five years in the making, Americanized is the debut album from indie funksters Soulkid#1. A deft blend of classic soul and hip indie rock, it's a hidden classic.
- Genre: indie / indie funk / indie pop / indie rock
- Marc Godfrey (vocals / guitar), Pete Mills (bass), Donal Finn (guitar), Ryan Yerdon (drums)
- Sounds like: David Bowie, Primal Scream, Beck, Dr Dre
- Home: Los Angeles, California
- Soulkid#1
Music With Soul
Once in a while, an album comes along that makes you glad to be a music lover, just through its sheer mix of cool and style. Americanized, from Los Angeles-based indie funksters Soulkid#1, is one such album. A heady mix of life-affirming soul and indie sensibilities, it's a sublime end result of an album over five years in the making, and a testament to not only the song writing skills of protagonist Marc Godfrey, but also that the music industry still rewards determination and sheer non-stop belief.
Coming across like all the best bits of Marc Bolan, cult Scottish band Primal Scream and David Bowie amongst others, Soulkid#1 offer a refreshing slant to the indie scene, and the twelve tracks on this debut album reflect this. Opening with the instrumental title track itself, it's a languine journey through distorted instruments and radio phonic vocals, all in one laid-back mix that recalls a humid summer's day.
This is immediately followed by the blistering Until It's Gone…, complete with Hammond organs and a time travelling feel that harks back to the best that 'seventies music had to offer. Imagine the Black Crowes writing for T-Rex, and you're halfway there. Vocalist and driving force behind the band, Godfrey is all slouch and almost invites you to lie back and let the music take you to a place at once familiar yet new.
Feel-Good Factor
It's Your Lifestyle, Baby continues the trend, with a pulsating bass line that stays in you even after the song has finished. Complete with female backing singers that gives the band its soul-like sound, it's a glorious piece of funk and lo-fi guitars. Yet just when you think this is going to be the trend for the rest of the album, along comes something like (More Bounce In) California, with its tongue-in-cheek look at the way that Californians like to live life. So popular has this song become that it's actually seen as the unofficial anthem for the famous state.
This feel-good factor is continued in the ultra-hip Ghetto Fabulous, an irresistibly catchy and infectious celebration of a song, with its dance floor bass line and hook-laden chorus. This is the beauty with Soulkid#1 and Americanized – it's almost as if Godfrey finds it impossible to write a weak track.
If there is any part of the album that doesn't quite stand up to the quality found elsewhere, it's perhaps on Two Of Us Against The World, which sounds so similar to David Bowie's Heroes that for a moment you feel you may be listening to the English singer's seminal Changes album. It's not that Two Of Us Against The World is a poor song; it just seems out of place on an otherwise impressive album.
Some Kind Of Wonderful Future
However, this is just a minor blip, as the anthemic Some Kind Of Wonderful Drug proves, with it's double beat drumming and almost psychedelic guitar and keyboards running a kind of distorted race together. And it's this kind of sound that Soulkid#1 excels at, and shows that there is still room in the industry for trying something new.
With the songs of Soulkid#1 already garnering widespread acclaim before the album was even released – a prime example being (More Bounce In) California, which sold over 100,000 copies alone on digital download – and the record industry that initially ignored them now falling over themselves to lay down praise for Americanized, this is an album that deserves to be in everyone's record collection.
