Horace Andy - Living In The Flood (1999)

Horace Andy is one of the true living legends of reggae, a great falsetto singer whose earliest work established a roots reggae foundation upon which numerous other singers would later build, and who has managed to continue to make vital and influential music throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, largely thanks to his collaborations with the British trip-hop band Massive Attack. It's Massive Attack's Melankolic label that has given Andy a place to hang his hat, first with the career overview Skylarking, and now with an outstanding album of all-new material. The sound here is strictly roots, with real drums and horns (inexplicably, there are no musician credits), old-fashioned reggae grooves and cultural lyrics. Andy is singing as beautifully as ever (on every track except "True Love," which finds him painfully off pitch), and on such highlight tracks as "Juggling" and the epochal "Living in the Flood," you'd swear he was still in his 20s. (The U.S. version of this album includes a Mad Professor remix of "After All," and there is a hidden track embedded in the program after it.)© Rick Anderson /TiVo