Album of the Week: Shamir Ratchet

Las Vegas has long been a musical focal point for a weird amalgamation of artists. It had the lounge singers in the vein of the Rat Pack who really put the place on the map, then it went through a sort-of rock phase thanks to Elvis, and in the decades since it has become a residence for pop stars who want to spend months at a time performing for tourists (I'm looking at you Celine and Britney). Vegas has always been a town almost entirely driven by its nightlife (it seems to me anyway, a guy who has been there once when he was a kid) – the famous lights, the crowds on the strip, and the smoke-filled clubs with a lone crooner singing to guys down on their luck.

Earlier this year, Mark Ronson released Uptown Special, a perfect soundtrack for a Vegas night, chock-full of songs to get you on your feet and moving. It's an album with an undeniable anthem ("UptownFunk"), but quieter numbers like "Crack in the Pearl" shine for going a little under the sheen. Still, it's an album for the crowds – the people clogging up the tourist traps and causing the bathroom lines to stretch outside the club. Shamir Bailey's debut album Ratchet is something else entirely – it's an album to get you on your feet and moving as well, but it's for the natives of Vegas, for the travelers in the night. The people who see the tourist shit every day of their lives and have no interest in the glitz – they want something real. They go to all the places the rest of us will never know about, with people we'll never meet. They all know, as Shamir tells us, that Vegas is really only okay at night.

The first thing that stands about Shamir is his voice – a quicksilver, androgynous instrument that he is capable of brandishing with a cocksure wit, or quietly deploy to damn near break your heart. It's a once-in-a-generation voice, and I'm so pleased we live in a musical point in time where he can share it with us.

The uniqueness of Shamir's voice might be the marquee feature of his music, but that should in no way overshadow how skilled he is at taking electronic, pop and disco and tossing them into his bubbling creativity cauldron to create his own sound. His music is going to remind everyone of someone (depending on your musical tastes) but it's never in a ripped-off way. There are very few artists who could create a sound this specific to them as Shamir does on Ratchet. The group this album most reminds me of is the best electronic group of this century (full stop), LCD Soundsystem, particularly given Shamir's ability to build an extraordinarily catchy-beat out of simple tools, with just the perfect build-up of flourishes. We haven't heard this kind of skill out of the gate since James Murphy and Co.'s debut a decade ago.

Take songs like "Make A Scene" and "On the Regular," which manage to captures Shamir's knack for building a beat in the most infectious way possible. Both songs hearken back to LCD's "Drunk Girls" or "Pow Pow," not only in their sonics, but in Shamir's lyrics, which are brimming over with a jester's wisdom and barbed sense of humor. When he advises "Just can't make a thought a wife,/no more basic or ratchet guys./Listen up, I'm saving you/from all the hell that you'll go through" at the end of "Call It Off," it's with the exasperated smile of someone who knows.

If there's any justice in the world, "In For the Kill" will become a contender for song of the summer, in addition to becoming a club mainstay. It features an undeniably brilliant use of a horn riff, and just gets catchier from there. I bet it is dynamite live.

As great as Shamir is at getting you on your feet, his hardest hitting songs are the ones where he slows down. "Demon" is a wonderful number about being stuck in a relationship that hurts both parties, yet seems inescapable. It might just be Rachet's "Someone Great," as Shamir's voice glides over a lovely organ-driven beat, and his voice takes on a hint of despair as he delivers some of his prettiest lyrics.

The real stunner here is "Darker," which manages to sound like – I kid you not – a sunrise over the Vegas skyline. It is simply gorgeous, seeped in the night's atmosphere, and Shamir's voice is the beams of the sun – light, airy and utterly piercing. "You know it doesn't get darker/Unless you expected to," he calls out with the wisdom of one who has watched his fair share of sunrises banish the night, and it's utterly sublime.

Album closer "Head in the Clouds," is a personal motto, album thesis and fuck you to anyone trying to stop him all rolled into one, and ably shows there is nowhere Shamir can't go. "Got nothing left to lose,/Just want to make my next move," he sings. Bet on Shamir - he can't lose.

Ratchet is out on XL Recordings.