Little Dragon – Season High [CD]

2017 release, the first album in three years from the Swedish outfit. Trailblazers: the standard bearers in today’s burgeoning electronic/R&B genre that they helped create. Collaborators: a band’s band. Well respected by other artists with whom they’ve featured and produced with, made remixes for, and/or performed with. Now comes Little Dragon’s most complete full-length album effort to date (Season High). It’s a set of exquisite personal songs that showcases Nagano’s balance of numerous soulful vocal traditions, while blending the group’s far-flung influences into a singular, post-’80s synthetic soul-club sound. Coming as it does at a time when pop-club culture is exploring more emotional and soulful approaches, and when contemporary R&B is re-engaging with the broader 4/4.