New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Early James, an
Alabama native and the latest signing to Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound roster, releases his debut album, Singing for My Supper, via Easy Eye and Nonesuch Records today. The album spans hard-charging blues, wistful folk, and ages-old pop crooning, anchored by the singer's voice that oscillates from gravel-gruff shout to a honey-smooth whisper. James' inspirations run from
Fiona Apple and
Tom Waits to the Southern Gothic poets, as heard in the album's darker themes and in the wry humor with which he writes about them.
To pick up a copy of Singing for My Supper, head to your local record store, the Top40-Charts.com Store, iTunes, and Amazon, and listen on Spotify and Apple Music.
Early
James "dazzles on luminous debut ... this astonishingly assured album," says Mojo in its four-star review. "A superlative crooner with grit, soul and impeccable phrasing ... When Early
James sings for his supper, every Michelin-starred chef in Christendom should plate-up."
"It sounds like his music has been floating through the American South for centuries," says Uncut. "With a touch of the sinister, his voice swerves through a spectrum of wild emotions; folk, blues and a dreamy, eerie style of pop."
"These songs are amazing," says Australian Broadcasting Company's Triple J presenter Nkechi Anele. "His voice is unlike anyone I have heard before. He sounds like he is from another era. It's unbelievable and great."
Auerbach, who decided he needed to produce the singer's debut album after watching just two seconds of a video of
James performing, says: "Some people are good singers, and some people are better than good singers; they just have this great form of expression."
Early
James is on tour with The
Lone Bellow through April, then joins The
Black Keys on their "
Let's Rock" Tour in May.
Early James' debut features ten wide-ranging songs, co-produced by Auerbach and
David "Fergie" Ferguson, is full of world-weary wisdom. "Blue Pill Blues" details a period when James, who was being treated for depression, quit his antipsychotic medication cold turkey. "High Horse" is a lament of the ways his adolescent excitement faded with the arrival of the vices of adulthood, while "Easter Eggs" finds the songwriter coming to terms with some of the darker sides of his heredity.
As soon as he was old enough, Early
James moved from Troy to Birmingham, where he's become an integral part of the city's thriving music scene over the past half-decade. His diverse experience in the Birmingham scene has helped mold him into a singular talent whose sound remains uncategorizable. Mother Jones says, "Early
James is the type of guy that might have walked into Sun Studios in the 1950s to record an unhinged rockabilly single with Sam Phillips …
James sounds like an obscure, ribald 1920's crooner time-warped into a 1990s heavy-alternative band."
Coming out of a local music scene as first-rate as Birmingham has also helped sculpt
James into a songwriter who obsesses over the craft and texture of every word he's ever sung. "Every line has to mean something to him, personally," says Auerbach. "It's not good enough to just write a good song, it needs to have a deeper meaning. He's unlike any person I've ever worked with. He's not writing a song to be universal; he's writing a song for him."
