Customer Reviews
My first introduction to GSH - By: J. Orden, 02 Jul 2010 
This cd was recommended by a friend. Enjoyed every second of this recording, well worth adding to any music collection.
Fantastic new Album - By: C. M. Kmita, 15 Jun 2010 
Gill's new album is gold. some of the sound bitesin between songs are skippable on subsequent plays. I recently saw himin Edinburgh. Excellent show aside from some support player showboating.
love it - By: Liz, 02 Jun 2010 If you are Gil Scott Heron fan, you will not be disappointed. It is very different from the older work but equally powerful & deeply emotional & personal.
Two bookends and mighty storm music - By: Bm Ballin, 15 May 2010 The two bookends on this album are 'on coming from a broken home', a poignant & reflective tribute to Gil's Grandmother, which set the tone for this most personal of his albums. There is no 'The Revolution ...', 'B-Movies' or 'H2O gate blues', but the LP is no less political for that ...in a society where young black men are more likely to go to prison than to university, & where conservative rhetoric about 'broken homes' [or 'broken Britain' for that matter] crudely pathologises a complex mixture of economics, social pressure, continuing racism, existential striving, resistance & gender politics. The second bookend of the two defiantly reframes that situation as a struggle for survival: a pursuit of happiness, even.
In the 80s, Gil Scott-Heron was a lodestarin a fairly fluffy musical world, articulating with great humour & precision the concerns that many of us hadin trying to make our way through lifein the Reagan & Thatcher era. His voice is more battered now, more crackedin every way, but the insight & humour is still there - only ploughing a more visceral furrow.
The other pivotal track on this album is the exceptional 'Me & the Devil', where Gill channels the crossroads spirit of Robert Johnson & describes his own pact with the devil. It is this tornado which whirls through the rest of the album, magnificently underpinned by a wholly appropriate blend of deep blues & techno dramatics: hair-raising stuff on the track itself. Whether gently introspective, defiant, chaotically cut-up, the CD is a meditation on that diabolic pact, & Gil's personal jihad to reclaim himself & find a sort of redemption.
The bookends balance out that human tornado, humanise, soften & contextualise & externalise it, take it beyond himself. The grandmother we met years agoin 'Grandma's Hands' [another great G S-H cover] is there as a loving, tough, presiding spirit. Mending what seemed to be broken. This is 28 minutes of powerful medicine: an album, & not just a collection of songs.
Genius - By: Jason Brooker, 12 May 2010 Those who have given this album a bad review just don't get it. Of course it's not like his other albums. Of course it is very different. GSH is an artistin the true sense of the word, & he has moved on from his previous incarnations. The man has spent alot of his adult life on drugs & some of itin jail, & he is reflecting on the consequences of this as well as the debt he owes to the women (the strong women)in his life. He isin his sixties now & has a different perspective from the young fire brand who wrote Whitey On The Moon. But make no mistake, this is an important work. It is both challenging, moving & profound. My only criticism, if you can call it a criticism, is that it is very short. But sometimes you can say all you need to sayin 28 minutes.
