Over eleven years and three albums, Curtis Harding has built his reputation on what he calls his “slop ’n’ soul” music, a fusion of blues, gospel, psychedelia, and R&B. Now he carries those roots into cosmic orbit with his concept album Departures & Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt, which imagines a pilot adrift in space on an interstellar journey. It's an album deeply personal to Harding.
“Because I’m away from home so much of the time, a lot of these songs came from feeling adrift and wanting to get back to the ones I love,” Harding says. “I started envisioning this character who takes a journey and gets lost in space, then ends up traveling through different galaxies and dimensions as he’s trying to find his way back home.”
Built on layered arrangements, psych-tinged soul grooves, cinematic strings, and vocals that balance emotion with detachment, the album carries the listener into the mind of the drifting pilot as he searches for direction. As Harding explains, “I hope these songs help people to recognize that feeling lost is all part of the journey, and that the journey is what’s most important anyway.”
I don’t know if there are more adventures in store for Captain Curt, but for now I was glad to take this one with him. Departures & Arrivals is Harding at his best, sending his music straight into the stars.
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