(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TALK IT OVER")
LEON BRIDGES: (Singing) Am I wasting time? I've been acting all out. Come rain...
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
We could all use a little more joy in our lives, and that is exactly what Leon Bridges provides with his new album, "Happiness Anytime," and it's out today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TALK IT OVER")
BRIDGES: (Singing) Talk it over. All we do is talk it over. Little less upon your shoulder.
SUMMERS: Jewly Hight from member station WPLN in Nashville is here to break down this new album for our New Music Friday segment. Hey there.
JEWLY HIGHT, BYLINE: Hey, thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. OK, I am a big Leon Bridges superfan, so excited to talk with you about this one. But for folks who maybe aren't as familiar with his music, what should they know?
HIGHT: Well, I know you know your stuff, but Leon Bridges is a singer, songwriter and producer from Fort Worth, Texas. And he really was initially thought of more as an R&B traditionalist or a retro soul singer. And on this new album, he teamed up with a couple of members of the British electro soul band Jungle - Josh Lloyd-Watson and Lydia Kitto - after they ran into each other on the festival circuit, playing with influences that range from soul and disco to Afrobeats and Brazilian jazz.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TEARS OF JOY")
BRIDGES: (Singing) Oh, I hear that voice, and it's talking back at me. Ten more years of glory. These are our tears of joy.
SUMMERS: Jewly, can you say more about what sets Leon Bridges' new album apart from his previous work?
HIGHT: Yeah. This time, he has deliberately redesigned how he will get to inhabit the stage during his live performances by drawing on this really global variety of rhythmically complex and liberating handplayed dance music. I think it's really cool that he's doing this because he did study dance and choreography, and he performed with dance troupes, so he has such a rich relationship to movement. And he, Kitto and Lloyd-Watson applied insights of all these musical visionaries - like Fela Kuti, Sergio Mendes - to cultivate this atmosphere where body, mind and spirit are so fully engaged. And they emphasize that they didn't drag out their work on any particular song, but they really committed to immediacy, to that living, breathing richness of being in the moment. And you can hear that on a song like "Light The Way," which echoes Fela's approach of creating that kind of multi-layered, polyrhythmic groove that pulls people in and moves them physically and emotionally and psychologically.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIGHT THE WAY")
BRIDGES: (Singing) Summertime, when the heat gets high and the bulleit weighs down low, baby. You and I, pretty little thing, want a cheeky bit of love on a slow day.
SUMMERS: Jewly, is there sort of, like, a driving theme that unifies all the songs on this record?
HIGHT: Yeah. I mean, it really is an album about consciously cultivating joy. And there's agency that's involved in that. He's not naively insisting on optimism so much as he is reaching for a more fully embodied way of sharing space with other people. And there's this awareness and sensitivity to the fact that people will be bringing burdens with them as they enter that space. During the song "Please Don't Say Goodbye," I mean, I hear him playing with time itself, the desire to bend it and stretch it and savor a moment, make it last.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PLEASE DON'T SAY GOODBYE")
BRIDGES: (Singing) All I ever want to do is see you smile. I was crazy to ever let you walk out of my life.
SUMMERS: WPLN's Jewly Hight talking about "Happiness Anytime." That's the new album from Leon Bridges. You can hear about more great new albums out today on NPR Music's New Music Friday podcast. Thanks.
HIGHT: You're so welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PLEASE DON'T SAY GOODBYE")
BRIDGES: Oh, please don't say goodbye. Oh, please don't say goodbye. Oh, you know that I want you by my side. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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