More than forty years after releasing his debut record Cold Fact, Sixto Rodriguez is finally getting the world wide recognition he has deserved for decades thanks largely to the release of the BAFTA and Academy Award winning documentary film, Searching For Sugar Man.
Although filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul does a brilliant job capturing the efforts of two South African Rodriguez fans as they attempt to uncover the truth behind the folk artist’s rumoured death, it is the music of Rodriguez that is the real star of the film.
It’s an impossible task picking a sole stand out track. Rodriguez’s lyricism is up there with folk gods like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Don McLean and the words are delivered with perfect measures of pure talent and working-class sincerity – the latter perhaps most obviously displayed in ‘A Most Disgusting Song’. As track after beautiful track rolls by you’re left thinking, how is it that this man remained so relatively unknown for so damn long?
Sony
9/10
Reviewer: Amelia Parrott