In 2023 Be With Records issued a vinyl pressing of Wally Badarou’s sought after 2001 CD, Colors Of Silence. Badarou has now selected 6 tracks from that album and turned them into songs. Badarou sings all of these super sweetly, with wisdom and honesty, and the sound of some of the numbers is a real reminder of his 1980 solo debut, Back To Scales Tonight. 

It Couldn’t Have Been You is a playful, polyrhythmic pop love song. A sunny collision of Caribbean soca and African highlife. Populated, percolating, with choppy chimes, brass blasts and chanted background vocals.  You Can’t Hide Always gets set to a downtempo groove that echoes stuff like Mambo, from Badarou’s pioneering state-of-the-art Synclavier heyday. We’ll Make It Again skanks slowly, gently, to a relaxed reggae rhythm, with something of the swing of “Tropical Dandy” Haruomi Hosono’s city pop exotica. Harp-like strings, keys and birdsong accompany the beatless ballad, Painting My Life Blue, while Just Two Lovers is very uncharacteristically, very un-electronic. Swapping the programming for a strummed acoustic guitar. Recalling Laraaji’s latest, folkier All Saints albums. 

Walk Straight Ahead, though, might just be the standout. A shot of softly reassuring positivity, with Badarou in kind of barbershop harmony with himself. Lyrically again there’s a little of Laraaji, and its sonic tonic similar to Beverly Glenn Copeland’s beautiful compositions. 

Wally Badarou’s Simple Things can be ordered directly from Be With Records.