Our favourite British soul label Dome Records really comes up with the goods this autumn. After the release of Dennis Taylor's third album In The Mood we get the brilliant Journey Into Day by Atlanta based Seek. This is Seek's third album and the first that's been released in Europe by Dome. Their second album, Surrender, yielded two 12" releases on Giant Step, the title track and The Story Of Us, with remixes by Ron Trent and Cottonbelly (aka Stuart Matthewman of Sade fame).
Seek is a six piece collective with Lisa Terry (vocals), Freddy Luster (guitar, bass, keys), Billy Fields (keys, bass), Brad Hasty (drums), Tina Howard (percussion, vocals) and Chris Kounelis (keys).
Seeks overall sound is a warm, soulful organic sound that fits perfect to other releases that has been reviewed on this site, like Deborah Bond, Sirius B Project, Incognito or Five Point Plan to name just a few. If you like one of the above mentioned releases, you can buy this album unheard, for all the others who are not convinced yet, we'll go a little more into details :-)
Rise tells about the joy of putting your life into a new perspective over a pleasant midtempo groove ("Have I let life pass me by?/ Think I was waiting here for something/ Now I'm leaving it behind/ Had enough of being restless/ Wanna lay my burdens down - time to live again/ When the morning comes, I wanna rise/ And all this time/ Wasted on a lie/ A fairytale, a magic spell/ Just as well to say goodbye/ No more sad and lonely days/ Gonna change my desperate ways/ Now the past is gone/ and all I have is what's to come").
Like you may have noticed from the lyrics to Rise, Seek are really in the tradition of 70ies soul with lyrics that digs a little deeper to examine life and love. Another fine song is Last Night... that tells the story of finally finding the real thing ("All this time/ I was looking down/ Instead of up/ I didn't notice my world/ Caving in/ And all my life/ I've been searching/ For the obvious/ Tried the second guess/ Tried to settle for the less than divine/ Then last night.../ I could finally see/ All that's meant to be/ Saw my destiny last night/ Looked into your eyes/ Saw my reflection/ Last night/ I could finally see all that's meant to be/ Saw my destiny").
Actually, I could rave about every song since there's no bad song on Journey Into Day. There's the tremendous Something Real, whose opening bars reminds me a little of a slightly housed-up version of Sade's Nothing Can Come Between Us, or the ethereal Loving Heart, an ode to friendship and love ("When I think back on the days/ When things were harder/ Saw you struggle just to make ends meet/ Now I'm a woman who's in better circumstances/ I wanna do for you, the way you did for me") or the uptempo Seekronized Remix of Right Here.
Journey Into Day is another proof of what an outstanding year 2003 already is in the field of soul music. Miss it at your own peril.
Postscript April 2004: In the meantime there's also an US release of Seek's Journey Into Day available on Brash Music that comes with two additional songs DJ's Make The Music Go Round, a fine midtempo ode to the DJ, and the Tauriva Remix of Ever After.