Also on the list for this year's Great Soul Hope is this cat, Willis Earl Beal. Young Willis hails from the South side of Chicago, and hollers the blues like a man who's seen some living. Turns out he actually has, and has a epicly-cinematic backstory to prove it. Finding himself in the arid New Mexico desert in a bout of depression after being discharged from the army for 'medical reasons', he started writing songs. But forgoing any sort of conventional path of self-promotion, he eschewed Myspace, Bandcamp et al, in favour of leaving CDs around town with cryptic flyers, "my name is Willis Earl Beal, I want some friends and stuff. I'm not a weasel".
Eventually these flyers caught hipster radar, and found themselves on the cover of US magazine Found. Fast forward to the present, with everyone jocking him from James Blake to Questlove - Mos Def has approached him to make a film of his life.
He's now found a home on the now-mighty XL Recordings (Adele, Tyler The Creator, Radiohead, Friendly Fires, The Horrors, M.I.A., The XX etc etc) which has earned him lots of unnecessary "new Adele" comparisons - come on people, he's better than that. His album "Acousmatic Sorcery" is due out this year.
- FABREEZE
2 comments:
SIMON PHOENIX SHO NUFF GOT THE BLUES
BAHAHAHA
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