Elridge: Press

Newfangled Old School

Elridge's new 'How It Used To Be' album is an aggressive slab of funkified rock, closer in sound and style to the Minneapolis of classic Prince than to our Middle Tennessee environs. In fact, the famed purple guy would do well to come up with something as infectious as 'Stick', or to temper a city story's sad sentiment with a righteous groove the way El does with 'Love Don't Mean a Thing'.

While his album is plenty vigorous, Elridge claims to notch things up substantially in concert. He claims to have 'hung from the rafters and dropped into the crowd' during a club performance, so heaven only knows how the two Tower Records locations will hold up to that sort of pounding. Elridge performs at Tower's Opry Mills location at 2 pm tomorrow and at the West End Avenue store three hours later. Both of these are in-store freebies designed to promote the album. Then, at 7 pm, he'll hustle down the street for a gig associated with the Elliston Place Street Festival: he'll play the Cafe Coco stage on Louise Avenue.

“How It Used To Be.” That pretty much sums it up. This record from the newcomer Elridge (and I use the term record because that’s what this CD should’ve been) is the kind of record you used to get in the mid- to late- 1970’s when not just radio but even artists were not so stringently formatted. When you got to hear an artist stretch out and expound on his ideas instead of take fifteen stabs at remaking the single. Elridge has put together songs diverse in both style and demeanor, from the hilariously off-color funk single “Stick” to his deadly serious requiem for a friend, “Free.” He’s got rock songs; he’s got R&B ballads; he’s got groove tunes. He’s got a swinging cover of the old Bill Withers classic “Use Me.” And it sounds like it used to. The band (yes, it’s a real band) is tight, and the production is on the verge of lo-fi: just a little frayed sounding here and there. It’s a constant surprise.

And if this guy’s got anything going against him in this day and age, it’s that. Elridge is not a member of the current crop of “pretty” singers. His style seems to be more that of the old soul-shouters, a little more Wilson Pickett or James Brown than Jamiroquai. He’s got a powerful voice that gets his emotional point across without a lot of acrobatics. And his stylistic spread is often referred to in the industry today as “lack of focus.” But in this age of slick, faceless MTV/BET stereotypes, this is the kind of record I WANT to buy. This is the kind of record I want to hip my friends to. I want to put on Elridge’s Ohio Players-ish hardcore groove “Moneymaker” and remind myself that “How It Used To Be” might still be how it is.