I must admit that I never was a big fan of the boy group Silk back in the 90s. Ok, I have their Silk album from 1995 and one or two 12″es but on the whole their music was a little bit too polished and MOR for my taste. Luckily, Lil’ G doesn’t want to revive the so called good ol’ days when he was part of the commercially successful group Silk. On the contrary, with The Other Side Gary Jenkins shows that there’s a life after Silk and makes a step toward an earthier, heartfelt and passionate sound with 14 self-penned songs and a cover version.
The opener One And Only is a fine example of his sound. A classic Rhythm & Blues song (this time I really mean the good ol’ days when R&B was simply soul and not black pop like it is today) with that old school Memphis Soul/Al Green feeling.
The Southern soul influences are picked up to good effect on the following midtempo songs Ev’rybody Dreams and The Door.
Gary’s talent also shines on the ballads like Lovin’ U, Make The Sound or So Sexy, the latter evokes memories of Al Green again with Gary doing some vocal acrobatics from low to high pitch and back again.
The song that really convinced me what a fine songwriter/singer Gary Jenkins can be is Moved On. Gary gives us a very moving performance on this song about his anger and frustration as a child when his mother had to deal with a straying husband and had to raise her children on her own.
There are some cliché riden songs like Friday Night (weekend’s coming, let’s have some fun and a party…you know this kind of songs) or the latin tinged Dance With Me that fail to impress me but tunes like U Keep On, the 80s/Prince/electro funk inspired Goes & Comes or a good cover of Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come make up for it.
To sum it up, The Other Side is a fine debut album with many impressive and soulful songs.

Tracklisting of The Other Side: 1. One And Only/ 2. Ev’rybody Dreams/ 3. The Door/ 4. Friday Night/ 5. Boojyghettoness/ 6. Dance With Me/ 7. Lovin’ U/ 8. Goes & Comes/ 9. Make The Sound/ 10. So Sexy/ 11. So Free/ 12. Moved On/ 13. Change Gonna Come/ 14. The Other Side/ 15. U Keep On | released 2005 Expansion Records

For more infos visit expansionrecords.com, cdbaby.com.

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