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The ghost of Marvin hovers over debut by Digi-Soul merchant - sensuous dancefloor fodder with an evocative voice.
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There's more captivating electro-funk where that came from: his debut album is stuffed with it, some immediate enough to match Black and Gold's success.
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This is a daring, crisp modern soul album rich in ideas and star quality.
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The best part of Sparro is that he's not just multiplying old styles by new sounds. Dressed like a raver B-boy, switching between Rufus Wainwright and D'Angelo, the boy's not faking it.
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As good as he evidently is as an arranger for the modern pop market (props, too, for song-penning collaborators Paul Epworth and Anthony 'Eg' White)--lacks lyrical consistency: for every neat tongue twist guaranteed to have you mouthing the words back in the shower the next day, there's some truly atrocious couplet that's best forgotten before it's heard.
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Jun 14, 2012A patchy affair which too often fails to transcend its blatant P-funk influences.
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It's a mixed bag certainly and while nothing else here scales the heights of the single that's made his name thus far, there are plenty of moments of pop confection steered with a degree of sophistication to suggest he's more than a one trick pony.
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There's a confidence obvious throughout that suggests Sparro will build on what is a strutting debut, even if at the moment he's a big voice with too many small songs to sing.
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While Hercules and Neon Neon took their dance nostalgia and turned it into something smart and new, Sam Sparro too often sounds like it's come straight out of an electro-funk generator--perfect reference points intact, but not developed or built upon or made unique.
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UncutOften stunning, but arguably also a little too knowing and shallow. [Aug 2008, p.108]
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After a while the tracks all begin to sound the same, disco beat with Seal style R&B vocals, no bad thing but nothing much original and nothing to come close to the single 'Black And Gold.'
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So as things go along, the similar, recycled beats meld into one another with little to distinguish them.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 22 out of 22
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Mixed: 0 out of 22
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Negative: 0 out of 22
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Oct 11, 2010