How many ways can a bleeding man sigh? Crack into a million pieces of hamstrung emotion then reassemble himself with a guitar, a song and a soul?

On Keziah Jones long-awaited third album, Liquid Sunshine the answers come crooning over waves of melody, rhythm and dubwise noise. Astute listeners will discern literate echoes of Curtis Mayfield, Freddy Mercury, Marvin Gaye and Prince in the Nigerian-born Keziah’s keening vocals, of John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Nolen and Jimi Hendrix in his bedevilled and driven rhythm guitar, of Tricky, Nirvana and Soundgarden in Liquid Sunshine’s trippy songcraft and experimental production conceits.

As with any artist of substance, Keziah presents us with more to chew on than the sum of his inspirations. As the great Argentina writer Jorge Luis Borges has remarked, artists invent their influences as much their influences invent them, a fact often overlooked in that reductive game we all play of sourcing recent arrivals to their ... read more »