Send "Jamie Lidell " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pastemagazine |
 On his fourth album, Jamie Lidell pays homage to everything from ’60s funk to ’90s R&B, blending pastiche with the glitchy production for which his record label has become known. Compass is as eclectic and bugged-out as his last album, Jim, was subdued, and there are plenty of throwbacks: “Enough’s Enough” is blatant Jackson 5 worship, complete with one-two-threes and bouncing flutes, while “She Needs Me” evokes Boyz II Men with a cascading piano intro and Lidell’s layered vocal swells.The title track, featuring Beck, would have felt at home on Sea Change, but most of his collaborators—including Feist, Gonzalez and Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor—all but vanish in the delirious swirl of the music. Lidell’s voice easily shifts from soul melisma to a more gruff, linear style, although several amped-up numbers (“You Are Waking,” “Gypsy Blood”) feel inert. Luckily, most of the album sticks to the kind of warped romantic confections and wild, simmering vamps he does best....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| A major problem with the bulk of indie dance is the way its producers mistake their adopted genre for a candy-colored playground. Time and time again, we find ourselves faced with another obnoxious group of go-getters vomited up by the hype machine, always heralded as some kind of cultural revolutionaries for their foray into dance’s shiny textures or sub-bass pleasure centers. Yet so often they are sorely lacking in any palpable emotional depth or clear purpose. Never mind that there’s a whole world out there as devoted to body activation as indie rock is to earnest expression (or whatever); college kids can’t be expected to go for the real deal. What’s the point of Jamie Lidell? When Multiply came out in 2005, some fuss was made about his transition from harsh noise to Jamiroquai-infused pop. It was impressive enough, but now it’s five years later and, slogging through Compass, the shock of the new has definitely worn off. If you’re going to try and assert your cool in a scene that’s perpetually on the outside looking in with regards to natural, expressive body movement, I might suggest a better starting place than Timbaland’s excruciatingly weak 2007 solo crash landing....full text |
| Bbc |
| Jamie Lidell’s third album for Warp is not something you can listen to sitting down. It’s a mutating and thoroughly amiable record that uses funk and soul merely as a jumping-off point, before fidgeting off elsewhere. So let’s dismiss those “blue-eyed soul boy” clichés to the back of the lazy drawer. Compass was written in a month and recorded between Beck’s Hudson Studios in LA and Feist's ranch, as well as bases in New York and Canada. Lidell’s co-conspirators here also include Gonzales, Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear and Pat Sansone of Wilco. And maybe that’s why it feels like quite a skip from 2008’s Jim, and such a giant leap from his Warp debut, 2005’s Multiply. This time around, it seems Lidell is determined to take things further, by dirtying an (already messy) funk blueprint....full text |
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