Worth the wait: Gabriels’ first album ‘Angels & Queens’ has been a long time coming. Photo: Supplied
Two such powerful minutes, shot by a protestor. Singer Jacob Lusk is in the middle of a crowd in Covid masks that’s sat down, heads bowed respectfully, like they’re in church, right in the middle of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, in the US.
The amateur footage has captured him, dressed in a black shirt and white pants, giving a flawless rendition of Billie Holiday’s haunting song about lynching, Strange Fruit, through a megaphone, at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest.
A dad in the crowd puts his hand reassuringly on his young daughter’s back as Lusk’s vocals soar towards the brooding sky.
This beguiling performance ends a short film for Gabriels’ single Love and Hate in a Dif ferent Time, the centrepiece off their just-released debut album Angels & Queens.
Gabriels is an LA-based, three-piece contemporary soul band consisting of two Americans, Lusk and violinist Ari Balouzian, plus keyboard player and producer Ryan Hope, who’s originally from England. The band is named after the street he grew up on in the city of Sunderland — St Gabriel’s Avenue.
“So, I went and marched, and it was the most beautiful thing to see people marching together,” Lusk said, recounting the BLM protest in a BBC interview.
“They handed me the megaphone and I sang the song. For me, that song has a different weight now; I understand that my voice is the sound of my ancestors, of my friends who have passed…
“It’s an unfortunate thing that we’re still experiencing this — no, we’re not being lynched in secret anymore, we’re being lynched in public by police officers.”
Gabriels, which was formed in 2016, is not an overtly political band, though. They remind me of some of their forebears, such as Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder — on Angels & Queens, they are politically conscious, but without ignoring the rest of life and love, loss and lust.
They have caught the attention of the likes of Elton John, as well as taste-makers such as BBC presenter, label owner and DJ Gilles Peterson, who said Gabriels were “a lockdown discovery for me — what drew me in was this incredible voice poised between Al Green and [disco icon] Sylvester”.
The 36-year-old Lusk’s voice is an instrument of wonder — from a sky-high falsetto to a sexy growl and far beyond. It leaves you spellbound.
In addition to the two greats Peterson mentioned, Lusk also reminds me of singers such as Jimmy Somerville, Nina Simone, Prince, D’Angelo, Sarah Vaughn, Moses Sumney and Smokey Robinson.
Like legends such as Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye, he learned to sing in church. But he is no copycat — he is authentically Jacob Lusk. Being an original is probably why he couldn’t impress those smug judges on American Idol — in his fifth attempt in 2011, he only came fourth.
But Angels & Queens’ power isn’t restricted to the amazing sweeping, widescreen cinematic soul that accompanies Lusk. Even before you put the record on the turntable, the evocative monochrome cover grabs your attention. It bears a photo of Lusk being baptised by his pastor Greta Knox in a reservoir in California.
He was chosen as the subject both for his role as frontman and his religious background.
I can’t help it but, whenever I listen to a new album that I really love, I always play spot-the-comparisons. This was no exception. For me, Angels & Queens invokes a variety of musical moments, from the precision and warmth of Motown’s backing band the Funk Brothers to the dramatic style in which Nina played the piano, the most prominent instrument of the album.
There’s old school doo-wop and rocking gospel embracing the choir parts. The album is a string-driven thing too — here sweeping 1970s Philly symphonic soul and there Arthur Russell-style cello.
But Angels & Queens is also thoroughly modern. In its production there are nods to electronic soul and the alt-R&B of the likes of Massive Attack and Frank Ocean. On We Will Remember they cheekily and tastefully quote Barbra Streisand’s The Way We Were.
Despite all the religious stuff — and I think Lusk is sincere about it — like some of the greatest soul singers, he grapples with lust and sin in the most creative way.
On the delicious Taboo, with the lines, “Bible says it’s bad but not for me/ Don’t bring me fruit then say I can’t eat/ Shit so good it brought it me to my knees,” he is like Prince and D’Angelo at their pure and filthy best.
Despite all these resonances, Gabriels’ music is most certainly not a pastiche of any of those genres or musicians. Angels & Queens sounds fresh, like something I’ve never heard before, while bringing me joy with the echoes of beloved musicians and their styles.
I think their secret lies in that they don’t churn out their music. It took them five years to release their first EP in June 2021. Angels & Queens was released in two parts — last year the first, and the second edition in early July.
“A big part of what we’re doing is to go back to that era of, ‘Let’s wait until the work is really good before we put anything out and make sure it’s really good,’” Hope said in an interview with New Musical Express.
“We’ve tried to do that with our videos and with everything we’ve done, to keep that integrity and quality to it, and I think people have noticed and appreciated it.”
So, soul is back. I cannot wait for this 30-something trio’s next record. But their history so far tells me to be very patient. I bet it will be worth the wait.