Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
Lukas Graham, Warner Brothers Records 2018.
Do you remember the furor over the original cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland album?
That cover, a double-page spread, was composed of a number of naked women of mixed race spread decorously across it.
The outrage from the churches, particularly in the American bible belt, fired up the ‘moral majority’ and forced the record company to change the cover.
How times change.
Although with the current world-wide rise in conservatism and their thought police you may need to get in early to secure a copy of this Lukas Graham album with its original artwork before Warner Brothers Records bow to pressure and change it.
The lead single from the album, Love Someone, has already amassed 50 million Spotify and 30 million YouTube views and it’s made the playlists of most radio stations.
It has attained the number one spot in the band’s home country, Denmark, and it’s rapidly rising up the charts in the UK, throughout Europe, and Australia.
Lukas Graham is confusingly the name of the singer/songwriter and the band.
Their previous album, 7 Years, hit number one in 13 different countries and earned the band three Grammy Award Nominations so it’s going to be a hard act to follow.
The band’s lead singer has an impressive vocal range and on occasions he sounds like Michael Jackson and sometimes like Leo Sayer, especially in the track Promise.
Ballads rule the day and musically the vocals have been given prominence.
There is a lot of space in the mix.
Many songs have a stop-start staccato effect and the use of a single instrument, mostly piano, and voice is common.
While Lukas wrote 7 Years in his mid-20s this album sees an older and more mature writer grappling with the loss of his father and laying bare his vulnerabilities and fears.
The album is not at all bleak. Lukas is now 30 and engaged to his long-term girlfriend and he’s the proud father of his little girl, Viola.
The album really chronicles the transition from son to father.
