A Late Renaissance for This Veteran Poet

Gil Scott-Heron sounds older than 60. Years of cigarettes, cocaine and prison time have weathered his voice, scrubbed it with sandpaper. What remains is thick and careful and potent, like some forgotten whiskey. His voice is timeless.

Especially on I’m New Here, the poet’s first proper record in 16 years, which sounds like the Tibetan Book of the Dead as interpreted by William Faulkner as produced by Portishead. Still, that description underestimates the record’s touchstones, made by decades of artists that Scott-Heron himself influenced.

In fact, nearly a third of I’m New Here is cover songs (bold, considering the record doesn’t even spin for half an hour), but as blues standards, they’re the perfect canvas for Scott-Heron. All is cyclical with this raspy poet.

This is most obvious in the two parts of “On Coming from a Broken Home” that bookend the record. Lyrically, Scott-Heron sees just and vicious circles of morality: “If you’ve got to pay for things you’ve done wrong, uh, I’ve got a big bill coming,” he follows with a laugh on “Being Blessed (Interlude).”

That sort of casual introspection typifies I’m Not Here. It shows the poet also feels older than 60 – death looms ahead like a tall, scruffy pine and casts a shadow over all these song-poems.

Scott-Heron even anticipates his eulogy and mocks it in advance: “As every -ologist would certainly note, I had no strong male figure, right?” he says in the first song.

With much help from producer Richard Russell, I’m New Here is blues for the future. There are nods to folk, R&B, and hip-hop and some songs even recall dubstep, the most successful electronic movement of the past few years. But somehow all of it together makes for a lonely listen.

The best example is “New York Is Killing Me,” which is a classic blues tune recast in harsh streetlight. Russell uses cymbals, warped handclaps and a gospel choir to assemble I’m New Here’s darkest and best song.

If the record has a theme, it is uncertainty: in God (“if there is one,” he sneers, only to beg for His mercy a few songs later), in time (“Where Did the Night Go”) and in safety of any kind (“Running”).

But in his age, the poet is always certain of himself. “I was guided to get here,” he states, saying elsewhere, “I did not become someone different that I did not want to be.”

So while Gil Scott-Heron remains sure that his life was exactly what it was supposed to be, we remain sure of his genius. I’m New Here is an old-time record completely devoid of clichés, and one of the best records of this young year.