Formats
AW082 - LP
711447008213
Details
Ten Songs About Memory and Hope, the Anyway Records album debut of New York’s St. Lenox, is Choi’s singularly thrilling mix of popsong craftsmanship, atmospheric electro kicks, rich singing, jazz freedom, and, yes, karaoke. All of this, rendered with charisma to burn, is precisely what you hear on an energetic St. Lenox track like “I Still Dream of the ‘90s,” which colors the recent past with current longings for flying cars, or “Just Friends,” a fluidly melodic mid-tempo ballad that insists that pop-soul lives in 2013. For St. Lenox, emotion starts, although doesn’t end, with Choi’s voice, an agile tenor with an undewy top-end glow. His voice is, at any rate, one reason why songs such as “That Old Time Religion” and “Bitter Pill” occupy a listener’s memory long after the tracks finish. - James Hunter