Randy Lyght – Bumped Into Love
Randy Lyght – Bumped Into Love
YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyXoO_s0nws
There’s no question, even if this is your first time encountering Randy Lyght, that this is a song from a supreme stylist. Randy Lyght’s “Bumped into Love”, a single from his fourth solo album Another Side of Me, finds this longtime jazz singer working in peak form and alongside a first class cadre of musicians. There’s great artistry in what Randy Lyght does. He swings effortlessly with the arrangement without either element ever threatening to overwhelm the audience. It’s the end result of countless live dates over the years, runs with top shelf vocal bands like The Platters, and an ability to change with the times without ever veering away from the fundamentals that brought him to the dance. “Bumped Into Love” isn’t dyed in blue – it embodies the nuanced, understated eloquence so common to best songs of this type and has dry, deceptive humor sure to win listeners over by the score.
It buddies up to listeners from the first. This is a song with an amiable gait that never comes on too strong with listeners and, instead, slides up next to your ear and makes itself at home. It’s very comfortable and charged with the sheer joy the band and Lyght alike convey in their performance. Despite the ever so slightly rueful side of this song’s lyrical content, Lyght keeps things relatively light and always entertaining, careful however to never drag things into a histrionic realm. “Bumped Into Love” benefits immensely from his deft touch with the style and how he never attempts to overshadow the band but, instead, sings with them. This is something you can teach, but the natural inclination to do so comes across without much apparent effort and proves quite compelling from the first. Lyght carries the lyrics off quite nicely and really makes the most of the phrasing potential here without ever turning the song into an unpleasant experience.
The horn playing particularly distinguishes itself with this song and never has to rely on any ostentatious flair to gain the audience’s attention. Instead, everything is handled here with an even hand that never tests listeners’ patience and, instead, draws us further and further in with each added sway of the song. There’s no doubt that something this polished, however effortless it may sound, is the result of lots of hard work on the part of the vocalist and everyone involved, but Lyght never neglects to put something of himself into the song that makes it stand out from similar efforts in this style. His time with outfits like The Platters, years in live performance, and a succession of important solo albums has brought him to a place where he’s more in control of the form than ever before and it makes “Bumped into Love” a wonderfully entertaining effort from an album, Another Side of Me, that already rates as one of the year’s best releases in any genre.
NAPSTER: https://us.napster.com/artist/randy-lyght/album/another-side-of-me/track/bumped-into-love
Mindy McCall