THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Like fine red wine, “Soulboy” Alexis Evans gets better with age. The best evidence of this is his new album Yours Truly. Produced and mixed by Louis-Marin Renaud (Lou Doillon, Theo Lawrence), Yours Truly is the Bordeaux singer-songwriter’s third album and sees the light four years after his acclaimed album I’ve Come A Long Way. Yours Truly consists of 12 brilliantly soulful cuts that take direct inspiration from ’60s and ’70s classic soul music, while adding a sound that is firmly rooted in the new millennium.
The album was recorded between Bordeaux and Nantes during 2021 and beginning of 2022. The idea behind the new album was to find a unique sound, mixing classic soul with more contemporary influences such as hip-hop beats, jazz, reggae, and Caribbean sounds. To do that, Alexis paired up with producer Renaud. “All instruments were recorded live, some titles were completely live and others got modified, cut, sampled, depending on the tunes in a kind of beatmaking way. It was a very fun and fulfilling project that will sound awesome on stage for sure,” explains Alexis.
Lyrically, the album could be described as soulful everyday rhymes. “Love may be the No. 1 subject in soul music and clearly has its place of honour in a few songs (Close To Me, What Is This Feeling), while other songs tend to deal with it in a more cynical but poetic way. For instance: In Mister Right On Time, “beauty remains in simplicity,” says Evans. “Another topic of the album is abandonment (It Matters To Me, The Only Apple, Close To The Water). Whether it is the fear of being left behind or the sadness after a loss, this album still bears some traces of lockdown and I was aiming at giving another perspective on different matters, looking at them in a dreamlike way.” The themes of the album are reflected in the cover artwork by Adrià F Marquès.
Evans, a songwriter with a timeless style, found the love of music and learnt to play guitar thanks to his father, an English musician. His inspirations range from Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke to David Bowie. At the age of 17 he debuted with his first project Jumping To The Westside, with which he was awarded the Cognac Blues Passion prize and flew to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, where he impressed the American audience even though he was still a teenager. Evans has built a household name in the scene as the “enfant prodige of soul.” Following his second long player I’ve Come A Long Way, he toured in France and Europe extensively, stopped only in 2020 by the Pandemic. Thanks to the forced break, Alexis started to lay down the new album, and now he’s shared the fruit of his hard work.”
