Gil Scott-Heron: I'm New Here (XL)

In 1994, a record producer/label executive coaxed a down-on-his-luck legend back into the studio. The resultant record of dark and sombre tones marked a change of direction, introduced the ageing artist to a new generation and prepped his career for a glorious Indian summer. But enough about Johnny Cash. Gil Scott-Heron, perhaps the most influential American poet of the past four decades, last released an album, Spirits , that same year. Since then he has spent more of the past 16 years behind bars than making music. It was on Rikers Island – where he was serving time for cocaine possession, a victim of his own addictions, just like those laid bare on his anthems The Bottle and Home is Where the Hatred Is – that he was approached by Richard Russell, boss of the XL label, who was keen to sign him once he was released. Russell also acts as the project's producer, a Rick Rubin figure to Scott-Heron's Johnny Cash, and, impressively, has steered I'm New Here away from those areas – hip-hop, acid jazz – where his charge's influence is greatest. Instead, Scott-Heron is placed in a variety of sparse acoustic and electronic settings. Russell – who charted himself in 1992 with novelty rave hit The Bouncer – has clearly been absorbing Burial's bleak chic and I'm New Here makes maximum use of Scott-Heron's raw, ravaged vocals. A cover of Bobby Bland's beautiful I'll Take Care of You sounds like desperate pleading through the bottom of a glass; Robert Johnson's Me and the Devil is rendered as horror-flick collision of dubstep and primitive electro. The title track, a cover of American alt-rocker Smog, is all slurred words and biographical resonance ("no matter how far wrong you've gone/ you can always turn around"). However Scott-Heron filled the pages of his prison diaries, it wasn't writing new songs. Four covers (one of his own, The Vulture), four short poems and a handful of interludes stack up to a slender 28-minute album. The only time he takes his own prose well beyond two minutes, the result is the brilliant New York is Killing Me, a finger-clicking, bass-humming lament for the simpler pleasures of the south. I'm New Here might turn out to be a footnote rather than an American Recordings-style new chapter, but this is as striking a return as we're likely to hear all year.