Mayer Hawthorne, A Strange Arrangement
Featured Album
There’s something studied about Mayer Hawthorne’s approach to ’60s-into-’70s soul — but that’s one reason it’s attractive. Where a latter-day old-style R&B unit such as the Dap-Kings, or a neo-soul vocalist like Jamie Lidell, often goes for power, Hawthorne opts to survey things and sidle in, modestly. There are times when he’s a little too modest: on the ballad "Shiny & New," a clear melodic nod to the Stylistics, his throaty falsetto can’t quite measure up to the suppleness of that group’s great girly lead, Russell Thompkins Jr. But for the most part, A Strange Arrangement works because of the way Hawthorne lets little details pile up. The matching flute and xylophone that take the song to the fade of the album’s title cut, or the on-the-beat guitar chank of the molten-sounding slow-dance "Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out," bespeak a lifetime of absorption in the sound of all kinds of vintage soul, and when Hawthorne sings in his natural tenor on "Maybe So, Maybe No" and "Let Me Know," he sounds authoritative on his own terms. And when he advises us to "get back up" in "The Ills," the swift, funky beat and dry horns— not to mention a lyrical nod to Hurricane Katrina, which makes the song something of a companion piece to Raphael Saadiq’s "Big Easy," from The Way I See It — show a guy who isn’t just living inside his headphones.
