Patrick Stump makes his game plain with the title of his solo debut,
Soul Punk: he intends to fuse soul singing with the songs of punk. Of course as a millennial,
Stump’s definitions of soul and punk do not necessarily belong to those of the boomers. This is not Stax/Volt-meets-CBGB, it’s a highly stylized fusion of post-disco soul and MTV new wave -- both fractured through the modern prisms of
Justin Timberlake and the post-
Killers post-punk boom -- a record that plays by a modernized definition of “soul punk.”
Stump piles up stuttering analog synthesizers, anchoring them via bumping, old-school drum machines and elastic electric bass, its instrumentation fearlessly retro, its aesthetic modern.
Stump sings “nostalgia I don’t need you anymore” and despite the thick ‘80s gloss he’s slopped all over
Soul Punk -- so much it’s seeped onto the computerized neon cover -- that sentiment is true: he’s living in a now where the past is ever present, accessible on YouTube, and shuffleable on iPhones.
Stump shifts his sounds around fearlessly -- sometimes he brings classic
Prince to mind; he launches onto a frenetic march on “Greed” that out-weirds
Gaga’s “Teeth”; sometimes his rhythms sound locked in an endless Nintendo loop -- a digital collage that’s ideal for his breathless worry of a world filled with bailouts, no jobs, and no hopes. Like any good album for the information age,
Soul Punk is overloaded well past the point of saturation and its merciless in its attack, so it can be a bit overbearing, yet there’s a real, vivid imagination behind its crystalline clamor. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine