If DePlume seems uniquely dedicated to making space for other people’s self-expression, he is less keen on opening up himself. It’s an unbound record that invites you to marvel at the scope and promise of the community that produced it, then telescopes back to the listener with messages of encouragement that are clearly hard-won. His new album Gold – Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love, released this month on Chicago’s pioneering modern jazz label International Anthem, offers a vision of positivity laced with a tugging frailty, as well as nods to vintage Ethiopian music and Japanese folk. And yet DePlume, born Gus Fairbairn, appears to have a magic touch. This sort of earnest vulnerability could be horribly mawkish in lesser hands. He’s forever in the moment, a Mancunian mystic with heavily ringed fingers fluttering in midair and a half-smoked, unlit rollie abandoned at the corner of his mouth. His live shows are halfway between motivational sermon and spiritual reverie. What do you need out of today? How do you want to make people feel? His songs are full of aphorisms about transcending fear and holding fast to humanity. As a conversationalist and songwriter, Alabaster DePlume swaps small talk for big, disarming questions.
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