Aloe Blacc: Good Things - review

In a previous life, LA soul songwriter Aloe Blacc was known as E Nathaniel Dawkins and employed by Ernst & Young, a period that inspired the striking credit-crunch anthem that opens this album, I Need a Dollar. Having experienced life on both sides of the social divide, Blacc writes affectingly of the damage caused ("These families in the street with nothing to eat/ Little baby boys and girls, no shoes on their feet", he sings in Life So Hard), mixing conscious lyrics and avuncular warmth in a way that recalls Gil Scott-Heron. He also turns his hand expertly to romance: Blacc celebrates the end of a relationship on the title track, breezily phrasing above pinging wah-wah guitar, while on a murky cover of the Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale, he's convincingly shattered. A real discovery.