Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me About Lewis Taylor?

Stumbled across this artist browsing through Borders yesterday and, well, read on:
Review of Stoned, Pt. 1
Taylor is one of those bedroom geniuses who handcrafts his music by his lonesome in a home studio. Yet there isn’t a second of stiffness or uncertainty here, and, though he makes plentiful use of sequenced keyboards, his unabashedly romantic songs have a warmth and expansiveness that most self-manufactured albums lack.

His principal avatars can be apprehended in the album-opening title cut. After a burbling synth intro, the number rocks in on a rubbery beat and some wah-wah guitar right out of Sly Stone’s book. The love-drugged lyrics (“You stoned me, baby, and I don’t think I’ll ever recover now”) lift a page from Marvin Gaye’s lubricious Let’s Get It On epoch, while his vocal growls evince a familiarity with Stevie Wonder’s classic early-’70s work. As the song reaches its climax, a fat Prince-style guitar solo roars up out of the mix.

Those models, plus a vocal sweetness one associates with Curtis Mayfield and some swirling production out of Norman Whitfield’s classic Temptations period (“Positively Beautiful”), supply the basic template for most of Taylor’s material and sound. But other pop influences clatter around as well: In full cry, his singing tears a sheet from Paul McCartney’s book, and the rising, layered harmonies on tunes like “Back Together” and “Lovelight” manifest the imprint of Brian Wilson. (In a bit of bold homage, Taylor bows deeply to Wilson with a gorgeous a cappella cover of “Melt Away,” from the Beach Boys maestro’s 1988 solo debut.)

Review of The Lost Album:
"A first spin of The Lost Album can get you to wondering if what you've just heard has any relation to soul, the sound on which the enigmatic British crooner Lewis Taylor has built his next-big-thing reputation. In a dozen songs, he drifts from the ringing guitars of classic '70s rock ("Hide Your Heart Away," "Send Me an Angel") to the warm textures and brilliant atmospherics of a classic Brian Wilson composition ("Let's Hope Nobody Finds Us") to a couple of vaguely Beatlesque songs ("Say I Love You"). Along the way, he manages to conjure up Laura Nyro, Todd Rundgren, and Syd Barrett, too -- no small feat for a guy who was once supposed to be the next Al Green."

NPR World Cafe interview/concert from last February

Listen, be amazed, purchase (or download if you hate capitalism), spread the word....or tell me I have poor taste in music. Either way.

Footnote: I wonder if this is just coincidence: