Retro R&B singer Leon Bridges was one of the more satisfying success stories of 2015. He was still living with his mother in Texas when a couple of guys from indie rock band White Denim helped get his just-so period music out to a receptive world. A restaurant dishwasher, Bridges ended up with two Grammy nominations and a gig playing for President Obama.
Coming Home was a sepia-tinted gem; by contrast, Good Thing takes some steps forward in time, updating Bridges’s Sam Cooke stylings with a little Usher; the production gently eases its way out of the 60s, too. Certain sections of Bridges’s audience are likely to define themselves against modern forms, so there is a risk here.
But Bridges handles the transition deftly. You Don’t Know finds him hovering somewhere near the 80s, while the excellent Bad Bad News is a funk track with a faint tinge of jazz, enlivened by call and response. “They told me I was born to lose,” he sings, “but I made a good, good thing out of bad, bad news.”
Shyness, forgiveness and new love are the timeless themes here, while the spacious Georgia to Texas offers up Bridges’s potted autobiography: struggle, love, religion and – spoiler alert – losing his virginity to a prostitute.