Jamie Lidell’s new album, Compass (out May 18), might be his most ambitious effort to date. While his signature blue-eyed-soul is very much in attendance, we now hear elements of Americana, folk and even punk rock creeping in — thanks in part to co-production from Beck, and contributions from a host of heavy-hitters including Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and Feist. Despite this seemingly broad variation in style, the album is grounded in a way that Lidell’s music has never been before. Having new love in his life, Jamie’s songs now exude a certain maturity and a reconciliation between his many musical identities. In the breadth of a single track, we can hear heavily processed beat-boxes, staccato horns, and stitched-together soundscapes, alongside constant streams of infectious hooks — it’s a difficult sound to pin down, yet somehow it blends together perfectly. I recently caught up with Lidell at the Standard Hotel in New York.

I became interested in your music with an interview in WIRE, five years ago. You said you had grown tired of the electronic music “space race”, and you wanted to get back to writing songs.

It’s a bit of an ego-crushing thing, because you can get a certain level of status, and you know how to get a high score on a certain kind of game, but you can end up playing that game ’til you die. There were other games in the arcade, and I don’t want to be getting high scores, anyway! That kind of fell off — it’s a shame in a way because there was a pioneering spirit that was going on. The more adventurous, the better. [But] It’s gotta have the funk! Where the hell’s the funk?