American idol who is gay and sings with band

Jacob Lusk is glowing. The lead singer of LA-based band Gabriels has just stepped off stage at Glastonbury, where an unexpectedly large crowd watched their soul-soaked, mid-afternoon set. Dressed in a custom green and blue satin robe, the singer is full of zest, cackling as he describes the gulf between his Glastonbury gladrags and the shabby hotel he's been forced to stay in.

The title track is both fire and brimstone as Lusk sings of "rapture coming" and the "walking dead all around me" over convulsing Motown drums and ominous spiritual chants. The cracked beauty of his falsetto makes him sound like a fallen angel. In the videothe music comes to a sudden halt and the picture cuts to footage of Lusk singing Strange Fruit to thousands of people at a Black Lives Matter protest.

What is happening? We're supposed to be progressing. As word about the EP spread, Gabriels came to London, played a series of intimate, word-of-mouth gigs, and gave a show-stopping performance on Jools Holland's TV show. By summerthey had signed a deal with Atlas Artists, an offshoot of Parlophone Records, and started crafting a debut album.

A few weeks later, Gabriels cancel weeks of tour dates so they can head home to finish it. Lusk hated the idea. In the ensuing flurry of activity, songs were pulled apart, reconfigured and reworked. The result is Angels and Queens Part One, a stunning mix of haunted gospel, stuttering electronics and timeless melodies.

It's as if Marvin Gaye made a record with Portishead, then played it back at the wrong speed. The Independent calls it a work of " real emotional depth ". The Guardian says it " could be the album of the year ". The band's not-so-secret weapon is Lusk's voice.

Raised in the Apostolic church, he can break your heart with a tremulous whisper and knock you sideways with the full force of his lungs. But he's always wary of overpowering the material. Lusk has been perfecting his vocals for decades - first in church, then as a backing singer for Nate Dogg.

The ‘Idol’ We Need Now

Inhe auditioned for American Idol and got his first taste of fame "I went to the Philippines and I got chased through a mall by people"but the competition left him scarred. He's cautious about saying more, but acknowledges that a personal uncertainty "about who I was" clashed with the producers' need to create a character.

After he was eliminated, "I couldn't even watch the American Idol videos," he adds. It was harrowing. Idol should have been a springboard to a solo career, but various deals and managers fell through. Lusk considered quitting music altogether, but ended up becoming a choir director, working with artists like Diana Ross and Gladys Knight.

The seeds of Gabriels were sown inwhen classically-trained composer Ari Balouzian and Sunderland-born video director Ryan Hope hired Lusk's choir to work on a commercial. He was coming up with stuff on the spot very quickly. They wanted to work with him again.

So Balouzian and Hope went to the singer's church instead, taking a remote recording studio in the hope of persuading him to step in the vocal booth. When he did, everything changed. That's when I was like, 'Oh, I think I'm gonna keep hanging around these boys'. The trio reconvened every couple of weeks between their day jobs and, slowly, the project unlocked something Lusk thought he had lost forever.