Album Review- Curtis Harding- Departures and Arrivals- The Adventures of Captain Curtis

Listening to Curtis Harding’s 2021 album If Words Were Flowers was a revelation. It led me to his two previous albums- 2014s Soul Power and 2017s Face Your Fear- all three are terrific. 

Of artists who have come out in the last 10 years, Harding is probably a Top 3 “most listened” to for me. Harding’s pedigree is the kind of multi-genre path that is reflected in his music. That’s probably coincidental but it is a list of some of my favorite artists of the last 25 years. In 2002, he made his first appearance on the hip hop soul debut album of Cee Lo and His Perfect Imperfections (he would appear on Cee Lo’s 2010 solo album The Lady Killer too). In the latter part of that decade, he worked with members of garage bands The Black Lips and Night Beats. 

His debut album (2014s Soul Power) would be released on the garage rock heavy Burger Records label. There was even a brief collaboration with Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds in that same time frame. He moved to Anti Records and producer Danger Mouse for 2017s Face Your Fears and start collaborating with Sam Cohen of Apollo Sunshine that would continue on the next album. 2021s If Words Were Flowers might be my favorite Harding album to date. Produced and cowritten with Cohen, it’s a soul album, but an album that sounds out of time. The video for “Can't Hide It” imagines Harding in 1971 on a "Soul Train" type show, and it evokes Funkadelic, Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder. And of course, with the name similarity, it’s impossible not to also think of Curtis Mayfield. You can hear a multitude of genres coming together- soul, pop, funk, gospel, hip hop, psych, jazz and R&B. Unfortunately, there’s no longer a home for this type of music outside of indie rock. 

It’s great that he’s found a home on ANTI-, with its roster of Mavis Staples, Bettye Lavette and Booker T Jones. But it’s also sad that he doesn’t get a bigger audience. You can name a list of recent artists that had that similar 70s sound - enough it’s a genre within itself- Durand Jones, Charles Bradley, Black Pumas, Michael Kiwanuka, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings- and this crowd does well with critics. There is also the Americana-adjacent Adult Alternative format which has given us St Paul and the Broken Bones, Leon Bridges, Alabama Shakes and Nathaniel Ratliff to name a few- that play in bigger venues and inch their way a bit more onto radio playlists Which isn’t to say Harding isn’t doing well. It’s just the frustration of a fan that wishes he was a household name. 

 I have to admit some trepidation for listening to 2025s Departures and Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt. Harding has had such a solid three album run that eventually he will release a dud, right? But I need not worry. Even if it might not have quite the killer single of "I Can't Hide It", it’s a solid album. As you can guess from the title, it’s a bit of a concept album. The music again is soul backed by lavish orchestration. The theme isn’t pushy though it does tie the whole thing together. Opener "There She Goes" is punctuated with what sounds like Ernie Isley’s classic 1970s guitar. 

Across the album we are sent to "Hard as Stone" with its indistinguishable lyrics floats out in the world of OutKast and Cee Lo to a dreamy bliss and later the disco stomp of "The Power" with plenty of high hat and keyboard riffs along the way with dabbling in the sounds of the Fifth Dimension and Marvin Gaye along the way. This album is such a thrill for me as a listener taking me to some classic records with no missteps along the way. I don’t know what the future holds (no pun intended for such a futuristic concept record) for Harding but he’s doing amazing work. ("There She Goes" follows Harding's 2021 video "Can't Hide It" in giving nostalgic vibes visually as well as audibly, in this case a Night Gallery/Twilight Zone pastiche)