After fifteen years Family Vision have exploded back on to the funk/soul scene with their new album Careful. A unique blend of Afro, jazz, funk and soul this group features the extremely talented vocalist Gary Harrison. Calling on Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway and Curtis Mayfield for his inspiration, the singer has a voice that seeps out of the music as if he was singing in silk itself. Matched with Thomas Beghaus’ jazzy grooves, the duo lay down some quality music in their second album.

The title track, Careful is a smooth outing, sax lines giving it that all important sexiness. It isn’t in your face, instead it feels very cocktail lounge as is the general trend throughout the album. Although it doesn’t suffer critically for it, it does lack a certain edge. The folksy Dancing with Marvin gets the same treatment, but again doesn’t come off too badly. The remix from Milano of Silent Souls really shows what could be done with the underpinning work.

The tracks that don’t feature Harrison’s vocals are great, A Smashful Shape lays down an incredibly funky broken beat and Hammond workout that literally has been slamming the keys in time to it as I write this. A cover of Otis Redding’s Sweet Soul Music is upbeat but instead of being funky, comes off a little too much bubblegum soul.

Whilst they may call themselves ‘roots driven NuSoul’, it seems a little bit more ‘easy listening’ to me. Some numbers on here excite but as a whole it lacks the sex that funk and soul are all about.

In a word: G-rated.