Ripples

Throughout, his oft-criticised singing is tone-perfect and balm-like. Ripples isn’t a juggernaut comeback, but it’s a beguiling, often beautiful album that quietly but purposefully announces his return to the fray, as ever, on his own terms.

Yes, the chords [on First World Problems] recall the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, but fans looking for a Roses-adjacent tune packed with slouch and King Monkey life advice are well served here. Not everything else lives up to it--Barrington Levy’s Black Roses is a dull, rockist trudge of a cover--but overall, Ripples is studded with little surprises.

A deeply mixed return, then, and perhaps not advisable as your first entry point to his solo work. We all know that Ian Brown can make waves; today he has chosen to make Ripples.

King monkey contemplates his navel. [Apr 2019, p.89]

Nothing really jumps out, and Ian Brown’s seventh album still feels weirdly unrewarding, the artist playing a contented father rather than raging at the current state of the world. That is fair enough of course, but for an artist as established and inspirational as Ian Brown has been over the decades, we surely deserve waves rather than ripples.