On his debut, "Maverick a Strike," 23-year-old Scottish-Ghanaian singer Finley Quaye – who sounds like Horace Andy after listening to too many Al Green records – succeeds in cooking up soul-soaked, remix-ready roots reggae music for after-hours '90s dance floors. Laden in Studio One bass lines, Stax-era horns and organs, and African drums and thumb piano, Maverick delicately reshapes time-tested reggae styles, from dub to lover's rock and dance hall, with subtly applied trip-hop trimmings and Lee Perry-worthy lyrical outbursts ("My bass man is a ghost/And my ghost is a news carrier"). It's only when his arrangements fall short (the bland beats of "Supreme I Preme," the stock guitar work of "Sunday Shining") that Quaye becomes trapped by the past; for most of Maverick, he's liberated by it. (RS 778)

JOSH KUN