D'Angelo, O2 Academy Brixton - review - Music - Arts

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Now, with a new album, James River, in the pipeline (albeit a seemingly endless pipeline), like some deposed but rehabilitated monarch, he's re-saddled his horse and rode in to re-claim his crown.

Before a Brixton audience giddy with excitement, D'Angelo looked the part but only in part. His flab has evaporated, but his comedy hair, vest and romper suit trousers suggested Rab C. Nesbitt auditioning for Mad Max. But D'Angelo is more than a former tour de force who's been forced to tour and with a nine-piece band honed to perfection, this was no Whitney Houston-style car-crash comeback.

Instead, while 22 minutes of Shit, Damn, Motherf***er was 17 minutes too many, waves of sex-fuelled, groove-laden transcendence summoned the ghosts of his troubled but torch-carrying forefathers: James Brown, Sly Stone, Prince and Marvin Gaye. Oh, and Lenny Kravitz.

His priapic version of Feel Like Making Love and his own Chicken Grease whipped themselves up into all-guns-blazing frenzy; a souped-up Brown Sugar stopped and started like an old soul revue, while spry new songs The Charade and Sugar Daddy were supertight aperitifs for James River.

And when he dismissed the band and embarked upon a lengthy but mesmerising, piano-propelled medley of favourites, including a spine-tingle Untitled (How Does It Feel), the crowd sang along as if he'd never been away. If only ...

D¿Angelo