Review: Gil Scott-Heron – I’m New Here

A Gil Scott-Heron release is an event to be lauded and explored, for this review I will try to move away from my knee jerk reaction for the former and attempt the latter.

Gil’s latest release I’m New Here, released on independent label XL Recordings and produced by label owner Richard Russell is a well crafted work.  The creative influence from the owner of perhaps the dopest label around is clearly apparent on “The Crutch” and “Your Soul And Mine.”

This is not to say Russell has simply taken Gil’s former recordings and constructed his own “Gil Scott-Heron” album, like so many posthumous Tupac Shakur albums. He has brought Gil forward with the new movements in music: to pick from the XL Recordings roster you could profess that the album is part Radiohead, Beck, and all Gil Scott-Heron.  Tracks like “Your Soul and Mine” and “New York is Killing Me” being clear examples of that sound.

Gil is comfortable in this setting. Never seeming out of place or lost; you must remember he was on the forefront of movements like acid jazz, if he doesn’t know his way, he’ll just make it up.  Russell has given Gil a new avenue to explore the power of words.  Since the release of the haunting single “I’m New Here”  there was discussion as to its meaning.  We’ve come to such conclusions that Gil is coming to grips with death, a retrospective on his life, or an overview on the state of America: economic straits & a black president.  I at first among the last group.  Taking his words and extrapolating upon them that he is in a place he never expected to be, with the past considered heavily, he sees a new day, but there is still a deep pallor of dread, indicated by the pulsating and viscous track accompanying Gil’s words.

My final conclusion is that I’m New Here is an amalgam of all three.  Gil Scott-Heron uses his family and personal life as an analogy for the changing America and to cope with the assuredly approaching finality of death.  As he states “I come from a broken home” and later “I came from a broken home,” after presenting the ups and downs of his family life (America), he seemingly comes to multiple conclusions: the past made him who he is today, its a sort of cathartic moment when he comes to grips with that; he can move forward and has gone through too  much to dwell on it.

I’m New Here is a quality pickup,whether a fan of Gil Scott-Heron or not.  It is a wonderful listen, with passion and purpose, not to be passed up.