Fueled in part by the visual aesthetics of '80s and '90s Sports Illustrated,
Leon Michels could have taken the ball and really run with it for
24 Hr Sports. Instead, the title is only a little more indicative of its contents than that of
Yeti Season,
El Michels Affair's non-conceptual preceding album as lone headliner. There's a marching band intro, two interstitial themes, a song with soccer-referencing lyrics (in Portuguese), and another features a chorus (however blurred) declaring "We want the gold!" In other words, nothing approaches
Jock Jams territory or even remotely resembles
Chuck Mangione's "Give It All You Got." Athletically uninclined listeners needn't worry about being bombarded with sports stuff.
24 Hr Sports is largely standard
EMA, reconstituting and contemporizing psychedelic soul with touches of jazz, funk, and hip-hop, and elements of vintage sounds from Jamaica and Brazil. The guest vocalists nearly span the wide world, representing the States, as well as Brazil (
Rogê), Ghana (
Florence Adooni), and Japan (
Shintaro Sakamoto and
the Suginami Children's Choir), and altogether factor in the album's considerable variety of material. "Say Goodbye," an easy-rocking pop-soul showcase for
Adooni, and "Take My Hand," a spirit-lifter voiced by
the Fabulous Rainbow Singers (and
Rahsaan Roland Kirk's sampled saxophone solo), are the most noteworthy vocal numbers. Just beneath them are the blissful and dubbed-out "Shining," where
Michels furtively takes the mike, and the smeared sunshine pop of "Open Season."
Norah Jones and
Clairo, both of whom released a
Michels-produced album in 2024, each co-write and front a soothingly pleasant song. Among the instrumentals, the harder the drums, the better the track, as the gnashing "Cortex" demonstrates. The fusion factor is highest on "Oakley's Car Wash" (presumably a shout-out to the Yonkers business owned by former NBA star Charles Oakley), a brief, kicked-back delight with a dip-and-dive solo from
Roots trumpeter
Dave Guy. Pieces such as "Eastside" and "Victory Lap" have enough space to accommodate, say,
Black Thought reciting a Ralph Wiley column with the use of a football phone. Maybe that would have been too on the nose. ~ Andy Kellman
