eMusic Review 0
Without knowing its backstory, you might figure that Losing Sleep is the sort of self-celebrating look backward that ex-punks of Edwyn Collins's generation occasionally release: the former Orange Juice frontman, now the godfather of a certain strain of indie-pop, joining forces with a bunch of artists he inspired (Johnny Marr, Aztec Camera's Roddy Frame, half of Franz Ferdinand) to revisit the territory of his three-decade career. It's got the sound of a totally solid Collins album — taut, twitchy arrangements with as much early Motown as early post-punk in their genes, offsetting Collins's shaky, earnest croon.
The story of the album, though, makes it clear that it's a celebration snatched from the jaws of disaster. In 2005, cerebral hemorrhages left Collins bereft of language and unable to walk. He's had to re-learn how to do everything, including writing and talking; his singing voice is largely intact, but it must have taken an astonishing effort to get back there (it helps that a lot of its appeal in the first place was being a little bit off). If you pay a bit of attention to the lyrics on Losing Sleep, it's clear that a lot of them are about the artist assessing… read more »
