Jamie Lidell

Jamie Lidell is, as he sang on last year's Multiply, a "walking, talking question mark," and Multiply Additions only makes him seem dottier and loopier. The ten-track album of redos and remixes finds Lidell straddling his most pronounced personas — the electronic enthusiast of his 2000 IDM-slanted album Muddlin Gear and the blue-eyed, Jamiroquai-on-a-serious-James-Brown-kick soul of Multiply. His work with Christian Vogel as Super_Collider has perhaps struck this balance more excitingly, but Additions is not without charm. Freeform Five reupholsters "When I Come Back Around" in paisley print, simultaneously paying homage to vintage Prince by using his trademark drum sounds and trumping the purple one with a resulting house track that owns any of his attempts. Matthew Herbert, meanwhile, puts a stutter and bump into Lidell's too-smooth trunk, turning "Multiply" into a digital hoedown and throwing "A Little Bit More" into a slow-mo k-hole. Additions, however, buckles under the weight of a few stripped-down live tracks that only showcase Lidell's showboating. On them, he quickly goes from a question mark to an exclamation point fit for American Idol.