With his vintage-looking sharkskin suits, big rings and pompadour hairstyle, Eli “Paperboy” Reed looks the part of a throwback crooner. And with his new album “Come and Get It” — packed with big horns and a soul vibe that’s straight from the ’60s and ’70s — he sounds the part, too, joining a wave of recent retro artists such as Amy Winehouse and Duffy.
The 26-year-old singer and his band the True Loves play Governors Island tomorrow at 6 p.m. for free, but don’t expect a retro scene. “People like good music and want to see a good show,” he says.
“I’m not assuming a throwback thing. It’s just what I do.”
Reed, a self-professed romantic, has felt an emotional connection to R&B music since he was a kid. His dad, a music critic, turned him on to all types of styles. “When I was a teenager, I gravitated more and more to the real heartbreak kind of songs,” says Reed, who was raised in Boston but now lives in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.
“I was an emotional teenage kid. That’s the kind of music that spoke to me.”
Onstage, he wows the crowd with his danceable pop songs. “I’m an amplified version of my normal self,” he says. “I turn it up.”
As for his look, he began to develop his style in high school by wearing suits to class. “I wanted to dress up every day and feel important,” he says.
The “Paperboy” nickname comes from another fashion item — a paperboy hat that once belonged to his grandfather. He wore it onstage in Mississippi, where he moved at 18 years old to hone his craft at juke joints. His fellow musicians gave him the moniker, and it stuck — just like his tunes will in your head.