Giacomo Gates's fourth album for Savant eschews the thematic approach of the previous albums, bringing together a fearlessly eclectic collection of 11 songs. A pair by Oscar Brown Jr. are both standouts. Taken from Brown's classic 1961 debut album, Sin & Soul, Gates brings his uniquely conversational quality to the salutary tale of ‘Somebody Buy Me A Drink’, and a diabolic charm to ‘Mr. Kicks’ (“The devil has sent me here because I'm full of wicked tricks, and I'm such a popular fellow among all you lunatics”). Gates illustrates his incredible sense of time in the Betty Carter-penned ‘I Can't Help It’, a song which deserves to be heard far more often, at least when sung like this. One of the album's real surprises, the breezy swing of ‘Silhouettes’ made famous by the doo-wop group The Rays in 1957, sees Gates laying down a freewheeling scat. It's also a real pleasure to hear the singer dust down Eddie Jefferson's virtuosic ‘Disappointed’ (Jefferson being possibly his greatest influence), as well as his sax-like vocal approach on ‘Spinnin’’ and Gates's vocalese on the Lee Morgan tune, ‘Speedball’.