Sole & The Skyrider Band

Though Sole's last album, Live From Rome, came out only two and a half years ago (in early 2005), and Sole has been busy in the meantime, recently releasing a solo instrumental LP, under the moniker mansbestfriend, and twice touring the U.S. and Europe, he nonetheless refers to the self-titled Sole & Skyrider record as a 'comeback' a curious term; what is a comeback exactly? Simply a return with a vengeance? In some ways, it is a record of return; return to rhyming, for one, particularly the complicated rhyme schemes that marked Sole's early work, a return driven by his seemingly, but not actually, discordant love of both Lord Byron and Lil' Wayne. Sole & Skyrider also represents a return to the musical consistency and coherence that made the Alias-produced Selling Live Water a critical triumph (see its reviews in Rolling Stone, The Wire, and Playboy).

It is also, though, more than a mere return. Even before he'd finished Live From Rome, Sole had become disenchanted with the process by which he'd been making music: get a beat, spit a rap, mix it down. Experiments with half of Twelve, an acclaimed improv outfit from Barcelona, and a detour into solo instrumental work followed, until a fortuitous series of events led him into the arms of the Orlando three-piece, Skyrider. Skyrider soon relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona, where Sole's been living since his return from living abroad, and all of a sudden, music-making became a warmer, richer thing. And you can hear it in the music: these songs feel lived-in, composed but not cold or calculated, and fierce yet not angsty.