Blessed with a distinctive soulful voice which combines a faux-Jamaican accent with the Cockney twang of his Hackney birthplace and the Irish lilt of his County Wexford upbringing, 21-year-old
Michael Stafford, aka
Maverick Sabre, first came to attention fronting abrasive slabs of dubstep by
Chase & Status and
Professor Green. However, there's very little in the way of massive bass wobbles on his debut album,
Lonely Are the Brave, which neatly fills the retro-hip-hop soul gap left by
Plan B's recent ventures into other fields. Indeed, the melancholic dissection of "Broken Britain" on understated opener "I Need" could well have been the first chapter of a
Strickland Banks follow-up, as could the stripped-back acoustic blues of "Shooting the Stars," a stinging attack on police brutality, and the doo wop-tinged "No One," a heartfelt riposte to an ex-girlfriend which appears to borrow the melody from
Ms. Dynamite's "It Takes More." As authentic as the vintage
Ronson-esque brass arrangements and socially conscious intentions are,
Sabre only really begins to make his mark when he ventures into more uptempo territory, and nowhere more so than on the three sample-reliant tracks: "Let Me Go," a triumphant slice of brassy trip-hop which uses the same eerie
Isaac Hayes string section as
Portishead's "Glory Box"; the laid-back mid-'90s neo-soul of "Memories" (
the Roots' "What They Do"), and the orchestral hip-hop of "These Days" (
the Turtles' cover of
the Byrds' "You Showed Me"). Elsewhere, the ghostly reggae of "Cold Game" recalls
Finley Quaye at his Brit Award-winning peak, the baggy beats of "Open My Eyes" and the summery East Coast vibes of "Sometimes" allow
Sabre to showcase his impressive MC skills, while the falsetto-led chorus of the toe-tapping "Running Away" provides the album's most infectious hook. An impassioned cover of
Sam Cooke's revolutionary classic, "A Change Is Gonna Come" (chosen as a response to the 2011 London riots), proves
Sabre is the real deal. But the more compelling contemporary fare on
Lonely Are the Brave suggests he should ditch the classic soul man routine and continue to embrace a sound as intriguing as his voice. ~ Jon O'Brien