Baby

Gauging Dijons stylistic range, aesthetic, and appeal is a fools errand. Sought as an all-around collaborator by Charli xcx, Justin Bieber, and Bon Iver, Dijon has also seen his spare ballad "Good Luck" sampled by Kanye West, and "Many Times," a nervy outburst between Thin Lizzy and Van Hunt, has been reinterpreted by jazz pianist Julius Rodriguez. Heres a guy who praised Jodeci as "the weirdest music ever" while wearing a shirt emblazoned with the title and credits of "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet," the Gavin Bryars composition featuring a loop of an improvised rhapsody sung by an unidentified homeless man. On Baby, his second album, Dijon and an assortment of close and new associates -- from fellow multi-instrumentalists and producers Mk.gee, BJ Burton, and Andrew Sarlo to supreme veteran bassist Pino Palladino -- continue to advance a scruffy type of modern soul music combining tradition and innovation with the favoring of raw expression. Twisted and bent with an anything-goes attitude toward sound and structure, it could be called R&B& -- rhythm and blues and whatever falls into place, whether divined or purposefully drawn from hip-hop, folk, country, or avant-garde production techniques. "Baby!" starts the album in rocking motion with Dijon singing in his pinched rasp to his firstborn, detailing the events that led to his fatherhood with touching and humorous candor. Pattering toddler steps race across the boomy, borderline TMI lullaby, and the joyous feeling continues. Over fractured new jack swing, Dijon propositions his wife to expand the family on "Another Baby!" He testifies to her on "Higher!," a slightly church-ified number where each sound -- blaring organ, prancing piano, twisting bass, the odd sample -- seems to arrive from a different angle. Taking it to the hilt, "Yamaha" is an ecstatic, blown-out ballad suggesting a lost late-80s love theme written with Ralph Tresvant in mind. From there, the material grows more combustible, tense, and emotionally scrambled, and that can be discerned from Dijons voice alone. He howls with such force on "My Man," a staggering ballad about his relationship with his father, that its a wonder he can still speak, let alone sing. He eases into a comparatively restful state in time for the final song, a blurred, swaying ode to companionship. The man has hits, but Baby is his apotheosis thus far. ~ Andy Kellman