Artist: Lynott, Philip
Label: Vertigo Records
Release: 1980
Runtime: 35:47
Rating: 4/5
“Solo in Soho” proves that the artistic pulse of a revered musical persona can beat just as vigorously outside the “prescribed” musical boundaries set for him. What’s more, the solo debut from the Thin Lizzy frontman, wrapped in original Lynott-style rhetoric and that unmistakable interpretive tone, set inside the frame of a boldly assembled mosaic of multicolored genre shades, is a real revelation. It also brings a certain kind of relief, because with this album Lynott managed to drag the cart of creativity out of the immediate vicinity of the mud that would start piling up around the ankles of the albums “Chinatown” and “Renegade” in the years that followed.
On his solo debut, Lynott takes a slightly different road. “Solo in Soho” is a bit of everything: it wanders from reggae and funk to good old Lizzy-signed rock, and in between it smears a few layers of synthetic electro pop with its fingers. The ham in this sandwich of “genre exoticism” is cut thick, served up as masterful lyrical dancing, rolled up like cannelloni in heavy layers of that recognizable vocal nasal drawl – two simple but oh-so-effective vocal traits, fused into one of Phil Lynott’s most recognizable musical signatures. Still, Thin Lizzy addicts should proceed with caution here. You’ll have to come to terms fast with the fact that “Solo in Soho” differs significantly from the direction Lynott charted with “Johnny The Fox” or “Jailbreak”, though you’ll probably soon make peace with the realization that the album is the legitimate fruit of the artistic development of the Thin Lizzy frontman. It’s an exotically spiced stew of Lynott’s old, familiar moves, seasoned with a bold look into the future, where the radical changes in the British music scene were pulling pretty much everyone along on their own. The winds of change were blowing at full force at the turn of the decade, after all.
So a colorful palette of genres bursts through the weave of the album’s sound, and with it comes a fairly predictable lineup of guest musicians – Mark Knopfler being the exception, of course. The man, with a heaping dose of those proverbially boldly woven subtle guitar outpourings, perfectly enriches the melancholic atmosphere of “King’s Call”, an ode to the departed Elvis Presley. By “some strange coincidence”, the Thin Lizzy personnel couldn’t be left out either: both Gorham and Downey lent a hand, and even Brian Robertson chimed in with the sweet but rather forgettable pop sentiment of “Girls”. The aforementioned winds of change from behind the walls of sterile “music laboratories” helped shape the album with a few interesting if somewhat clumsily conceived experiments, like the synthetic pop march “Yellow Pearl” (whose electro beat surely pushed the devouring hard rock crowd a drop too far). But don’t panic – the real band-aid on the (salted) wounds is “An Ode To A Black Man”, a lost Thin Lizzy gem and the album’s only technical knockout. An old debt means the return of an old comrade, as Huey Lewis drops into that characteristic harmonica gallop.
Behind the not overly spectacular but certainly well-covered instrumental backdrop of the album, Phil Lynott firmly pulls all the strings, of course also in his role as a brilliant word juggler. Lynott’s trick, as always, lies in an accessibility that gives the impression of an honest address to the everyday person. Just as an example – you can’t get more sincere and unfaked than “Dear Miss Lonely Hearts”. As usual, his directness hits the mark, nagged along in the right places with plenty of humor, from which outlines of dark sarcasm wriggle out at intervals, as in the title track’s reggae-oriented motif, where Lynott, rummaging through his rich lyrical treasury, covers up the track’s loose and quickly disintegrating instrumental potential. “Talk in 79”, a brilliantly caricatured verbal sketch of the current scene, repeats the exercise right at the end of the album with a radical funky rocker’s twist.
With “Solo in Soho”, Phil Lynott made an important step toward reinforcing his own credibility, and right when Thin Lizzy were slowly running out of steam in the creative cauldron. Today we know it was only a flash of inspiration, and sadly it failed to steer the musician off the course that later led to his tragic end, which in no way diminishes the value of this excellent and all-too-often overlooked album.
Lineup
Philip Lynott: vocals, bass, mini moog,
Gary Moore: guitar
Scott Gorham: guitar
Snowy White: guitar
Mark Knopfler: guitar
Jerome Rimson: bass
Jimmy Bain: keyboards, mini moog
Billy Currie: keyboards
Midge Ure: keyboards, mini moog
Brian Downey: drums
Bob Benberg: drums
Tony Charles: drums
Andy Duncan: percussion
Production
Philip Lynott & Kit Woolven
Track List
1. Dear Miss Lonely Hearts
2. King’s Call
3. A Child’s Lullaby
4. Tattoo (Giving It All Up for Love)
5. Solo in Soho
6. Girls
7. Yellow Pearl
8. Ode to a Black Man
9. Jamaican Rum
10. Talk in 79
