Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 22/8/05
Label: Island

Given what we know of Tyler James - aged 22, East End upbringing, narrow and suspicious eyes, the detail on the official biography that "most of his friends are in prison" - you might reasonably expect this to be the latest Isle of Dogs grime offering or, at the very least, some whisky-soaked acousti-grizzle about a life spent twixt the pub and the sofa bed. The last thing you'd expect is the new Terence Trent D'Arby.

"The Unlikely Lad" is the project that's been keeping the Billy-no-mates out of trouble in-between prison visits. Appealingly arrogant, satin-lined, Bacardi-flavoured, sophisticated 'n' summery R&B and blue-eyed soul with forays into vintage jazz and ska...it swaggers, it twirls, it brushes imaginary dirt off its collar and occasionally falls righteously to its knees.

How this doesn't come across as twerpish is down to James's exemplary delivery (he could always fall back on a career as a Smokey Robinson covers singer) and willingness to abandon soul's traditionally slick tales of courtly wooing for a look at decidedly modern mores: e.g. "Every day I try to treat her right/But I get drunk and I stay out all night/Looks like I won't get a second chance/Cos now she's sleeping with another man" - "Drunk All Night". He also, endearingly, is nearly always the dumpee not the dumper. Ladies love that from handsome blades like him: let's call it the Timberlake effect.

To be fair, it's far too long - the self-describing "Procrastination" ("Got to get this song down/Before I leave tonight" - oh no you don't), lazy jam "Speak Up" and overblown finale "On My Own" could all have been left in the vaults to be dusted off should James ever play a stadium and require costume-change music. Elsewhere, Amy Winehouse - his female equivalent - wastes her horny croak on yawnsome duet "Best of Me". Shame - with the right song they could melt tungsten.

However, ska-tinted "Why Do I Do?" - all plinky plonky piano, brass bursts, handclaps, subsonic bass boom, and a pace perkier than an aerobics video - is a vivid highlight. His cover of White Town's "Your Woman" at first elicits a big 'why?' - it's so faithful - but rapidly becomes androgynously thrilling (and a line like "So much for all your highbrow, Marxist ways" would raise any song above the bar).

James deserves to succeed but whether he does or not will depend largely, of course, upon Fifty Quid Man - who probably hated Terence Trent D'Arby - and his wayward mates' parole dates.

    by Anna Britten