The late John Updike, famed novelist and erstwhile reviewer, said that you review the book, not the author.  That is, strive to remove narrative, legacy (or lack there of), pre-conceived perceptions and focus on the art itself.

But, in this case, the backstory is as interesting as the album.

Willis Earl Beal is not your typical recording artist.  Consider: As of 8 months ago, Beal was playing in the subway, posting fliers for friends (“I am not a weasel,” one advertised), and living in his grandmother’s house on Chicago’s South Side.

How we got here — here being a debut release on XL Recordings that dropped April 3, and touring gigs around the world opening for caps-lock acts like SBTRKT and WU-LYF — involves such a circuitous set of coincidences, it almost seems like a movie. No surprise, Mos Def is already working on a script.

In 2005, Beal, unemployed, despondent, and discharged from the Army, found his way to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He chose Albuquerque because he saw a movie where the protagonist had an artistic awakening. Turns out, the movie was set elsewhere in the state. It’s been that kind of life for Beal.

Undeterred, he began making art, singing tunes in order to stave off lonesomeness.  He made drawings, posters, and CD-Rs wherever he could, and honed his voice working late-night shifts as a motel night porter, one of the few jobs he apparently kept. These songs, crudely recorded on a cassette-based karaoke machine, a $20 microphone and some found instruments, became the basis of Acousmatic Sorcery, a title that winks at its humble, patchwork beginnings.

Eventually, these drawings and songs, these scraps of himself, found their way to the editor of Found Magazine, which publishes things like to-do lists, and followed Beal back home to Chicago, leading to an illuminating feature in the Chicago Reader.  Then in a whirlwind that left the singer-songwriter speechless, he was jet-setting to New York to sign a deal with XL’s new Hot Charity imprint, hobnobbing with Damon Alborn, and eating lobster sandwiches.

“It was a thing,” he told Pitchfork.

Which brings us to the album itself, more than simply “a thing,” it is truly a striking and memorable debut. The opening track “Nepenenoyka” comprises of crude strumming on a child’s harp Beal scored at a flea market. But, it could also easily double as a sort of Pandora’s music box, tipping the listener that they are embarking on something dreamlike – at once intimately personal and mysterious.

The 11-track record then proceeds to assimilate an assortment of styles. He goes from the rooted, Robert Johnson-esque blues “Take Me Away” to the spacey “Cosmic Queries” that recount Tom Waits in theatricality and Gil Scott-Heron in tenor. There is even some spoken word and signs of hip-hop.

At times, the music can be abrasive (“Angel Chorus (edit)”) and almost too abstract (“Ghost Robot”), but hey, so can life.  More often than not, though, Beal’s earnestness and charisma – and legitimately potent voice – keep the record running upright.

Simply, the record is soul music – as in “bare your soul music.” On standouts “Evening’s Kiss” and “Monotony”, there is open-heart sincerity and poetic turns of phrase, his matter-of-fact observations recalling early Dylan.  Questions of where his debut places him in today’s build-up-break-down music scene, or even his own label’s plans for him linger, but Acousmatic Sorcery brings forth Beal as a talent worth cultivating with a debut album worth repeating.

4 out of 5 stars

4 out of 5