The last time we heard from Fort Worth singer-songwriter Leon Bridges, on the 2024 album simply titled “Leon,” he was looking inward, reflecting on growing up and coming of age in Texas. The mood was somber and reflective, splashed with touches of country along with his well-established retro R&B sensibility.<\/p>\n
On his just-released fifth album, “Happiness Anytime,” he is looking beyond the borders of Texas and discovering something outside the familiar while maintaining the soul-satisfying, comfort-food approach for which he’s known. He announces the switch-up on the album’s first two tracks, the horn-punctuated “Light the Way” and the gospel-tinged “Tears of Joy,” which glide along on a cloud of traditional of ’70s-era West African Afrobeat grooves. By the third track, “Illusion,” Bridges has fused Latin-music influences with neo-soul.<\/p>\n
While “Happiness Anytime” isn’t a complete break from the singer’s past — if anything, digging deeper into the roots of his music is a logical extension of where he’s been heading since releasing his first album, “Coming Home,” in 2015. After all, this is a guy who, over the last decade, has collaborated with everyone from genre-jumping Jon Batiste to Houston indie-rockers Khruanbgin and Regional Mexican music singer Car\u00edn Le\u00f3n.<\/p>\n
The global sounds on the album are probably due not only to Bridges’ desire for\u00a0musical experimentation but the influence of his producers this time around, Josh Lloyd-Watson and Lydia Kitto of the British electro-R&B-funk band Jungle. Their sonic fingerprints are all over the album, even the tracks that are more in line with Bridges’ traditional style.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, the detours on “Happiness Anytime” don’t distract from Bridges’ ultimate destination, which remains mid-century-modern soul. Such songs as the title track, “Fly Baby,” “All Day, All Night,” and especially the groove-alicious “Watch You Dance” and the finger-snapping album-closer “Please Don’t Say Goodbye”\u00a0 are tried-and-true Bridges at his best.<\/p>\n
Houston fans who want to see Bridges sing some of these songs in concert are going to have to wait a long while. His\u00a0announced tour doesn’t bring him back here until Sept. 2027 at 713 Music Hall, though, the\u00a0most dedicated can drive up earlier and see him in his hometown at Dickies Arena Fort Worth in April, 2027. Until then, they’ve got this exquisite little album to keep them company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time we heard from Fort Worth singer-songwriter Leon Bridges, on the 2024 album simply titled “Leon,”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-470523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}