There’s a huge, intense sense of dignity and regret found in Gil Scott-Heron’s new album, I’m New Here. Gone is all the swagger that you’d have found in his earlier albums such as Pieces of a Man. There lay an album full of confidence and attitude.

True, there was anger and a prevailing fight against injustice in the old records: just witness the civil rights focus to “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” or the theme of addiction found on Winter in America’s “The Bottle”, but permeating through all of the messages, Pieces of a Man was a self assured record.

With I’m New Here, any notions of self assuredness or confidence has long passed - although the fire of passion still remains burning under the surface. The fifteen tracks on this new album reflect a darker, more reflective - even meeker side to Scott-Heron.

The two pieces book ending the album share the title of “On Coming From a Broken Home”. But there is a sense that it is the man, not the home, that has been broken. In one of the record’s many interludes, he observes: “If you got to pay for the things that you’ve done wrong, I got a big bill coming”.

This feeling of regret and dissatisfaction with ones mistakes and life in general can be found throughout I’m New Here. “Where Did the Night Go?”, a recounting of a long tortured night of the soul features the line: “Don’t know how many times I didn’t do right again last night”. Meanwhile “Running” is full of restlessness: “Not running for cover/because if I knew where cover was/I would stay there/and never have to run for it”.

But there’s also an acknowledgment that all experiences, even mistakes, help to make the individual. Another interlude, entitled “I’ve Been Me” allows the observation that “if I hadn’t been as eccentric, as obnoxious, as arrogant, as aggressive, as introspective and selfish, I wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be who I am.”

It is in Scott Heron’s account of those who have influenced his life that the album finds its greatest moments. Parts One and Two of “On Coming From a Broken Home” are infused with an overpowering feeling of dignity and respect for the “womenfolk [who] raised me”.

These two spoken tracks, poems set to music (as much of the album is) establish the “special tribute” Scott-Heron speaks of in the album’s opening lyric: “to a family that contradicts the concepts/heard the rules but wouldn’t accept.” The result is an intensely personal album, an account of one man’s most intimate thoughts and feelings about his life - and those who have influenced it.

There is a beautiful poeticism which Scott-Heron uses to deliver this personal album. There always has been a sense of poetry throughout this artist’s work. Repetition of key words and phrases, along with alliteration and a fundamental sense of the mechanics of scansion underpin much of this artist’s work. It is, perhaps, what has made some refer to this legendary figure as “The Godfather of Rap”.

A casual listen to the album may fool the listener into thinking that the spoken parts, and thus the overwhelming majority of this album, are simply a man talking over some dirty synthesisers and gritty beats. It is much, much more than that.

His imaginative turns of phrase (“They sent a limousine from heaven/to take her to God - if there is one”) and refusal to concede to the artifice of rhyme (“Long ago, the clock washed midnight away/bringing the dawn”) show Gil Scott-Heron to be a master of language, whatever his many other skills may be.

Following a substantial leave of absence from releasing records, Scott-Heron’s new album is both a return to form and a departure into new terrain. It’s the same old poet, but this time there’s a heavy burden of world weariness presenting a meeker, more introspective set of poignant songs and lyrics.

13/02/10 - First published on www.noizemakesenemies.co.uk on this link