Things Change

David Steele, the brains behind Fried, previously moonlighted as the bass-player in Fine Young Cannibals, before embarking on a Homeric odyssey to find a pitch-perfect female vocalist to suit his nu-soul compositions. His journey took him to New Orleans, where he stumbled across a certain Jonte Short singing in a choir. After an, ahem, brief 12-year gestation period, Steele’s pet project is finally seeing the light of day.
Things Change is being released at a time when the soul battlefield is being redrawn, with Amy Winehouse’s brassy, lung-bursting antics effectively established as the sound du jour. Fried take a different tack, shunning that classic revivalism in favour of a slicker update on contemporary soul, and mixing stylised adult pop numbers with more brazen and funky barnburners. The ballsy ‘When You Get Out Of Jail’ exhibits a particularly wild abandon, a brief cameo from Wu–Tang’s RZA adding to its bangin' status.
Elsewhere, the slow-burning ‘Back From The War’ and shimmering ‘Friends In Lo Places’ pinpoint why Steele was so impressed with Short in the first place.
That he's been mulling over this record for a decade-plus occasionally becomes a little too apparent. His segues into cosy, coffee-house soul and re-fried late-’90s R’n’B beats are a drag on what is, generally, a record with plenty of swaggering ebullience.
Early comparisons to Aretha Franklin may be a tad generous – she certainly doesn’t have Aretha’s extraordinary presence – but for a debut effort, this is mightily impressive stuff. Expect the follow up in 2019.