Live Review: Lee Fields & The Expressions

The Expressions are six soulful, suave-looking chaps who jammed a while before introducing Lee Fields to the stage. They covered your average band setup plus trumpet and saxophone. One of the highlights, these guys were tightly wound around each other's psyche and blew in forceful unison.
Fields is like a reincarnation of James Brown, complete with spinning and grinding dance moves that had the audience squealing, and a scream that is at once song and plain passion. He doesn't lose any authenticity in the imitation.
He emerged wearing a matching, shining silver fleur-de-lis suit and sunglasses and spent the night picking out perfect women from the crowd and stating that their men must be satisfied. He charmed and wowed with shaking vocals, dripping with desire.
The Spiegeltent crowd was hooked; they never stopped moving and joined in with war cries of 'hey!' and arm waves.
A smooth rendition of I Still Got It only proved that he did and that he wasn't about to run out of energy anytime soon; with a small sweat handkerchief in hand, he bounced across the stage.
The most impressive moment was when Fields introduced a song that is sometimes hard for him to sing because his late father was so fond of it. I Wish You Were Here was an emotional ballad full of intensity and tremolo. “I felt that one,” he exclaimed before launching into some funk to bring the energy right back up again and people let themselves be lost in the groove.
The crowd wished trumpet player Billy a happy birthday as the band launched into a recent popular hit, Faithful Man, towards the tail end of the show.
Forget the New Year – Lee Fields will take you blissfully back to the strains of old-school soul where groove is a necessity and time almost doesn't exist.