Lex Allen doesn’t apologize for his wandering eyes. “Why you look at they? / Why you look at them? / I go both ways at the gym!” the singer cheers between boasts about his pricey watch and remarkable abs on “Struck Gold,” one of several riotously fun club cuts on his new album Table 7: Sinners & Saints. And just as Allen’s sexual identity is too all-encompassing to be satisfactorily summarized by any single word, the singer doesn’t slot cleanly into any lone genre, either. He’s got the husky yet supple voice of an R&B singer, yet just as often he dabbles in dance, pop and hip-hop, too. If there’s a takeaway from his act it’s that, yes, you really can have it all ways.
Table 7 opens with Allen’s big Top 40 moment, “Never Look Back”—a track slick and contemporary enough to be on an Ed Sheeran or Zayn record—and then then stays true to that mantra, showcasing Allen’s enthusiastic range. It’s hard to imagine any other singer sounding as comfortable on both the dapper torch song “7th Hour,” the album’s poignant closer, as he does “Bitch U Fabulous,” an audacious banger right out of the LaCage dance cage that ends with a literal climax (“Yeah! That’s the spot!” he squeals amorously). The big questioning going into the album was whether a studio record could capture the wildly entertaining spirit of Allen's glamorous live shows. Table 7 answers that question with a resounding "did you really even need to ask?"
You can stream the record below, and catch Allen at his release show Saturday, April 14 at Cactus Club.
