If you write songs and sing them, there's a decent chance that deep down inside, a part of you would like to be Bob Dylan. Lookman Adekunle Salami is a British singer/songwriter whose first album, 2016's Dancing with Bad Grammar, found him spinning wordy story-songs, many with simple acoustic backing, and more than one reviewer cited his likely debt to Dylan. On his second set, 2018's The City of Bootmakers, Salami manages to somehow sound both more and less like Dylan this time out. There's less folky strum on The City of Bootmakers, and this set shows off a more eclectic musical vocabulary, with flashes of full-on rock & roll and smart pop integrated with the folk and blues leanings of his debut. And Salami's wordplay is more dramatic and vivid on The City of Bootmakers; there's a passionate and defiant tone to topical numbers like "Terrorism! (The Isis Crisis)," "Generation L(ost)," and "England Is Unwell," and even the less political and more personal numbers come together with a striking tumble of words that's often dazzling if you can keep up. Salami clearly isn't aiming to be the plaintive voice of his generation, but here his best songs boast an intelligence, imagination, and command of the language that make him sound like an aesthetic peer of the man who penned the beautifully manic poetry of Highway 61 Revisited. That he does so without suggesting he's especially beholden to Dylan's specific lyrical constructs makes the accomplishment all the more impressive -- Salami is far too much his own man to borrow wholesale from anyone, but he's a gifted and fearless songwriter, and that's one similarity he'd doubtless acknowledge. And The City of Bootmakers' more ambitious and adventurous musical backdrops boast a welcome sense of discovery that makes these songs sound as good as they read. No one is looking for a new Dylan in the 21st century, but if anyone were, L.A. Salami's smarts, style, and commitment show he's cut from similar cloth, and The City of Bootmakers is a powerful step forward from his promising debut.
© Mark Deming /TiVo