In 1994, a record producer/label executive coaxed a down-on-his-luck legend back into the studio. The resultant record of dark and sombre tones marked a change of direction, introduced the ageing artist to a new generation and prepped his career for a glorious Indian summer.
But enough about Johnny Cash. Gil Scott-Heron, perhaps the most influential American poet of the past four decades, last released an album, Spirits, that same year. Since then he has spent more of the past 16 years behind bars than making music. It was on Rikers Island – where he was serving time for cocaine possession, a victim of his own addictions, just like those laid bare on his anthems The Bottle and Home is Where the Hatred Is – that he was approached by Richard Russell, boss of the XL label, who was keen to sign him once he was released. Russell also acts as the project's producer, a Rick Rubin figure to Scott-Heron's Johnny Cash, and, impressively, has steered I'm New Here away from those areas – hip-hop, acid jazz – where his charge's influence is greatest.
Instead, Scott-Heron is placed in a variety of sparse acoustic and electronic settings.
Russell – who charted himself in 1992 with novelty rave hit The Bouncer – has clearly been absorbing Burial's bleak chic and I'm New Here makes maximum use of Scott-Heron's raw, ravaged vocals. A cover of Bobby Bland's beautiful I'll Take Care of You sounds like desperate pleading through the bottom of a glass; Robert Johnson's Me and the Devil is rendered as horror-flick collision of dubstep and primitive electro. The title track, a cover of American alt-rocker Smog, is all slurred words and biographical resonance ("no matter how far wrong you've gone/ you can always turn around"). However Scott-Heron filled the pages of his prison diaries, it wasn't writing new songs. Four covers (one of his own, The Vulture), four short poems and a handful of interludes stack up to a slender 28-minute album. The only time he takes his own prose well beyond two minutes, the result is the brilliant New York is Killing Me, a finger-clicking, bass-humming lament for the simpler pleasures of the south. I'm New Here might turn out to be a footnote rather than an American Recordings-style new chapter, but this is as striking a return as we're likely to hear all year.
