Album Review: Kora - Light Years

The piano chimes. Five... Four... Countdown is progressing... Three... Two... The Kora family's rocket ship is good for launch. One... Little Star thrusts us right into a celestia populated by smart soul and Giorgio Moroder-esque disco grooves. When you have four brothers (and one other bloke) all pulling diplomatically in different directions, it's natural that the trajectory goes a bit spacey. Laughton and Francis Kora share lead vocal duties, keeping the sound assuredly 'street' while thankfully giving the traps of straightforward R&B a wide berth. Hit The Wall bounces like Tigger wearing a bandana on vodka Red Bull, commanding all and sundry to “Hit the wall, hit the wall, 'cause we gonna rise tonight”.

Light Years sometimes runs the risk of trying to be too many styles in too short a period – dub, soul, funk and hip hop all have their orbits – but it's a smooth ride through them. Galaxy Express, for example, stops short of using obvious swearwords (“So far, but I don't give a...”) and is what Al Green might sound like if he were starting out today. It's not like they're consciously pandering to commercial demands, it just means they don't get lumped in with some of their much lazier contemporaries.

The recent Drum cover stars still have some work to do to win over Aussie audiences but Light Years is packed with the material to do it. It may have taken four years to arrive but the time has been spent wisely. At the end, you'll be ready to dig out Prince, Parliament and even Outkast records. And that's no bad thing.