Fresh off the heels of our explorative dive into Joe Lington’s latest album release, 2022’s Black Desire, we got another chance to give his 2017 release, titled Trust, a spin, and we are happy to report that the eccentric, Irish RnB artist has it in his veins. Trust is another album of characterfully minimal and culturally diverse R&B songs that boast of tasteful vocal layering, as well as instrumental and musical panache throughout.
Based in Cork, Ireland, it is safe to say that Joe Lington’s background is rich enough to warrant his choice of musical color. The Black artist, fluent in French, Cameroonian, and English, who has started his musical life in a Gospel choir, and is now based in Ireland, makes music that seemingly pays homage to every particle of heritage he has. ‘Trust’, similar to his latest album ‘Black Desire’, is an album of great variety, jumping from soul to RnB, to gospel, with a few splashes of Latin and funk thrown here and there for good measure. Lington manages to weave a particular aura, perhaps with his masterful vocal layering, or perhaps with his relaxed, liquid compositions and arrangements, managing in the process to create a lush, cohesive atmosphere from one song to the next. This is the second album of his I have listened to that sounded like one, whole, fulfilling listen, from A-Z.
Lington’s confidence can probably be best observed in the starting cut ‘She Got Me’. Witnessing Lington establish a fire-breathing groove, gradually introducing a guitar, then s hot beat, and a thick bass line, only to terminate the process entirely and abruptly in less than 40 seconds was a very tangy, harsh, and bold move that got my ears perked for whatever Lington was going to bring on next. The album’s multiple songs sung (or rapped) in French all sound deliciously quirky. From the soul and funk ‘Ce Soir’, to the Stevie Wonder/Soulja Boy crossover of tasteful Rhodes, syrup-sweet soul chords, and a wailing distorted guitar solo that is ‘Ce Monde’, to the melancholy-laced late album cut ‘Elle’, all the cuts have different vibes, but their cores are all made of sublime vocal layering and a warm instrumental backdrop that can be safely called minimal, even if they are less so than their counterparts on Lington’s more recent release.
Joe Lington is not afraid to go a little experimental every now and then. With cuts like ‘Trust’, a lyrically open-ended piece of spoken word about Lington’s day-to-day life as a part-African, part-English, and part-French person, and about his subsequent resolution to one place, or to a one person that ended up giving him the will to continue living, and ‘Intro My Mother’, a barren ballad of piano and strings that feature only the distressing sounds of a weeping woman and a scene of a harsh fight between a couple. Lington continues to provide us with diverse musical ideas throughout the rest of the album. The 90s Latin pop-inspired ‘I Gotta Be With You’ threw me right back to the days of NSync. ‘Africa’ is a vocal-led number that features a fresh, percussion-led sequence with ethnic vocal yelps in an unadulterated display of the artist’s African background. ‘Remember’ is a centerpiece in the album’s latter half. With its earth-shattering sub-bass and accessible rap flows on top a familiar-sounding, syncopated synth part, and a straight beat, this song is one of the album’s most easily enjoyed pieces of pop with a tasty Joe Lington twist.
It seems that Joe Lington is an artist who knows quite well what he’s going for, and what is going for him. And it is through this awareness that he is able to stay perfectly between the boundaries of his comfort zone, taking only leisurely excursions outside of those boundaries every now and then, and bringing us in the process some very well-thought-out, loved, and balanced songs that all sound equally characterful and soulful, and all carrying a definitive signature from the heart and brain that conceived them. ‘Trust’ is simply another astonishing release from Joe Lington.
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