Ural Thomas And The Pain - Dancing Dimensions (LP)

Ural Thomas has a voice you feel in your ribs before you realise you’re grinning. Dancing Dimensions, released 3 June 2022 on Bella Union, captures the Portland soul lifer and his crack band The Pain in full flight, all brass sparkle and warm organ glow, with the rhythm section laying down grooves that feel both familiar and fresh. Thomas came up in the 60s, made a handful of scorching singles, then built a second life at home in Oregon with a big-hearted live show that turned local believers into a global audience. This album is the sound of that community distilled, patient but joyfully restless, steeped in classic soul but never stuck in amber.

What jumps out first is the looseness. The band plays like a group that’s logged the hours together, because they have. You can hear the Sunday-night-cookout ease in the pocket, the way the horns answer Thomas’s ad-libs with little smiles of melody. Drummer and producer Scott Magee keeps everything dry and close, as if the band set up in your lounge room, amps low, content to let the songs do the heavy lifting. The bass sits fat but unshowy, guitar parts clip and chime, organ pads bring that Al Green-on-Hi Records warmth, and the percussion adds hand-to-hand sparkle. It’s a live-in-the-room feel that suits Thomas’s voice, which still carries a soft rasp and a preacher’s patience. He doesn’t belt unless he has to. He coaxes, jokes, flirts, then slips into falsetto for the last line and you remember why his early 45s became collector staples.

The record balances dancers and slow burns with a curator’s touch. There are tunes built for a crowded floor, all claps and call-and-response hooks that could turn any pub back room into a family reunion. Then come the simmering ballads, those gently swaying moments where the horns hum like a ceiling fan and Thomas leans into the mic, talking about love like a well-worn craft. The arrangements are tidy but never fussy. Lots of space. Little ear-tugging details arrive and vanish, a tambourine shake here, a baritone sax rumble there. It’s the kind of production that lets you find a new favourite bit on the third or fourth spin.

What gives Dancing Dimensions its kick is the sense of time lived and time reclaimed. Thomas doesn’t chase retro cool. He simply sounds like himself, which happens to align with the finest bits of 60s and 70s soul, from Memphis to the Pacific Northwest. There’s a generosity in how The Pain play around him, a readiness to set up those tiny moments of release that make soul records feel like a series of doors opening. When the background singers ease in with a soft reply, you get goosebumps. When the trumpets punch a short phrase, you feel taller. The writing sticks to clean lines and plain language, which is harder than it looks. No dead air, no grandstanding.

If you’ve caught the band live, this album will feel like a well-framed photograph of the show. It’s not louder than life, just truer to it. If you haven’t, it will make you want to stand in a room with strangers and clap on the two and the four. The sequencing helps. Side A gives you the shine and the smiles, side B leans a little deeper into after-hours romance and reflection. On vinyl, you hear how the horns bloom when the volume creeps past halfway, and how the low end sits just right with a pint on the table and the window cracked for a breeze.

For crate-diggers, Dancing Dimensions vinyl is an easy recommendation. The pressing is quiet, the jacket looks sharp, and the album’s dynamic, band-in-a-room sound really comes alive on a turntable. If you’re hunting Ural Thomas vinyl generally, this sits neatly beside his earlier LP The Right Time and those reissued 60s singles that sparked so much curiosity. Plenty of Melbourne record store folks have already filed it next to contemporary soul peers while nodding to his deep history. If you prefer to buy Ural Thomas records online, you won’t struggle. There’s healthy stock across shops that specialise in soul and RnB, and you’ll find Ural Thomas albums on vinyl listed alongside Bella Union label-mates. Even for listeners browsing vinyl records Australia wide, this is the sort of record you can order on a whim and end up playing to close out a Sunday.

In a year stacked with flash and algorithm-chasing singles, Dancing Dimensions felt like a small miracle. No tricks. Just a band of friends giving a master the room to do what he does. Put it on during dinner, or when you’re sweeping the kitchen, or when you need to remember that music can make ordinary rooms feel charged with possibility. It’s soul music that trusts the song, the players, and the listener. That trust is the secret sauce, and it tastes like home.