Nothing New

A beautiful close to a brilliant music career. Gil's voice is breaking down (indeed, he himself is breaking down), but his words resonate deeply over a lonely piano as his songs are stripped down to the bone. Description via Wikipedia: Nothing New is a posthumous album of vocal & piano recordings by Gil Scott-Heron to be released by XL Recordings on April 19th, 2014 in conjunction with Record Store Day. The album consists of new, stripped-down versions of a selection of older Scott-Heron songs stretching from 1971's "Pieces of a Man" to 1994's "The Other Side". It was recorded with producer Richard Russell between 2005 and 2009, in the same sessions that led to 2011's I'm New Here. In the liner notes published on the official website, Russell describes the album as "carefully curated (and) an excellent introduction to his previous output", adding that "the album is utterly sparse and devoid of anything that is not completely necessary. All it contains is Gil's singing and piano playing." Tracklist: 01 Did You Hear What They Said 02 Better Days Ahead 03 Household Name (Interlude) 04 Your Daddy Loves You 05 Changing Yourself (Interlude) 06 Pieces of a Man 07 Enjoying Yourself (Outro) 08 Alien (Hold On To Your Dreams) 09 Before I Hit the Bottom (Interlude) 10 95 South (All the Places We've Been) 11 The Other Side 12 The On/Off Switch (Interlude) 13 Blue Collar 14 On Bobby Blue Bland (Outro)