Gil Scott-Heron

"eron - I'm New Here"

12 February 2010, 10:00 | Written by Andrew Taylor

(Albums)

(Gil Scott-Heron)

He may have spent much of the last quarter century way off the radar, but Gil Scott-Heron has boomed back onto it in recent months. I first read about I'm New Here, his short, sharp comeback album at the tail-end of 2009, when the Guardian's Jude Rogers boldly pronounced it one of the best records of the coming decade. Since then, he's graced copious newspapers ”“ including the cover of last weekend's Observer Review ”“ is scheduled to perform at the South Bank's Ether festival and has been interviewed all over the place, from Newsnight to Radio 4. He was even on This Morning the other day, talking proto-rap and crack pipes to Philip Schofield.Okay, so I made that up, but from nothing it suddenly feels like he's everywhere, and that has to be good news. Scott-Heron has released only one studio album since 1982; unlike Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, there have been no ropey religious records nor any lengthy sessions croakily bashing through other people's songs. Instead Scott-Heron had a string of fine releases, then lived for years outside of the public eye, spending stints behind bars, busted repeatedly for drug offences. It was widely assumed Gil would never get back into the studio and that perhaps explains I'm New Here's extraordinary critical reception.Of course, it helps that it's a fantastic album, for which hats have to be well and truly doffed to XL's Richard “Rick Rubin” Russell, who flew over from England and struck up an improbable friendship with an incarcerated Scott-Heron. Spoken interludes, recorded during their conversations are scattered throughout the record, but their relationship goes far beyond this obvious warmth. What Russell has done is assisted Scott-Heron in making something that sounds altogether fresh ”“ an album he couldn't really have released at any other point in his career.Nowhere is this more apparent than on the record's startling centrepiece, 'New York is Killing Me'. Over crisp handclaps, Scott-Heron growls the blues of city living, that he's got to get back home, that “out of 8 million people/I didn't have a single friend”. The desperate vocal performance alone would stop you in your tracks, but the production is strikingly intelligent; Russell isolates Scott-Heron while everything else burbles menacingly away underneath. At one point, his vocal gets dragged underneath too, distorted and fragmented ”“ it's a superb portrait of urban isolation.Elsewhere, there is a cover of Smog's 'I'm New Here', a take on Robert Johnson's 'Me and the Devil' (sounds a bit like the theme tune from The Wire), and yes, his spoken word pieces have a “dark” trip-hop, dub-step feel””all well and good, makes it feel very modern. But strangely, at times it also reminded me of Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears (Ballads of the American Indian), a 1964 album on which Cash delivers compelling spoken verses about Native Americans. On both albums, the scoring allows the words to breathe, leaving the listener to focus on the lyrics and voice””two reasons why I could listen to Gil's records till the cows come home.So, there's really not an awful lot wrong with I'm New Here. At 28 minutes, it's brief””but only in the sense that there's no time wasted. I wouldn't call it an easy listen either. Although some of the tracks deal with addiction, Scott-Heron sounds unapologetic; there is no vow to reform or stay off the pipe. Rather, there's a frank reminder to look beyond appearances. On the final track Scott-Heron describes his upbringing: “they called it a broken home, but if they ever really called at our home they would have known how wrong they were”. And sure, he looked like a goner but he wasn't, and he's hauled himself away from the brink. Now hopefully, he can stay there.