@echo: Till The Sun Turns Black

If Ray was saved by a woman in his debut album, Trouble, Till The Sun Turns Black is about the loss of that salvation and wanting his love back. The passion of his voice is still there, but very much subdued on most of the record. Instead he trades it in for a more somber dialect accompanied by strings. And the strings are more classical in nature; they might have meshed better in my mind if they were on fewer tracks or were more Damien Rice-ish. It's not that they are bad, but the combination of them and the more melancholy vocals seems to present an album that's the same lament throughout with a few joyful interruptions.

That said there are a couple things that are great on the album. While I'm not a huge fan of the strings, they along with a horns section and some piano/organ/B3 action do show growth instrumentally from Trouble. It's almost harder when a great debut album comes out... because you want the next album to sound the same and yet different. Since Ray's main attribute is his voice you know it's him, but since the music and even flow is different, you know it's something else than before. Kudos on that. Three More Days is the obvious first single and is a bridge from the old to the new, though don't expect too much more energy in any of the other songs. The horns and wurlitzer are fantastic in playing their part in the song. You Can Bring Me Flowers When I'm Dead reminds me of a laidback 1am blues/jazz club where Ray is a black man singing cause that's what he does. Again a boost of horns and even a flute sets this song musically in my top three of the album. The simplest track, Lesson Learned, has Ray just playing his acoustic with some spanish guitar fills and that brings forth his voice more dynamically; it could possibly even be the thesis of the whole album.

Not a bad sophomore release – for me there wasn’t much not to like about Trouble. For longevity's sake, as an artist, you need to stay true to your music but always growing, and Mr. Lemonade does that. We came because of the bolster in his voice. Now that we are listening, he wants to speak something a little different to us.