Still, some of the slicker numbers on the project work well: “Leave the Door Open,” “After Last Night,” and “Smokin Out the Window” are among the highlights, slathering elevated technique-all those key changes-with satisfying molten cheese. Motown’s artists worked hard to cross over for years now Mars has operated from the epicenter of pop music, not the margins. These songs are more “explicit,” but they’re fundamentally safe. Powell would have condoned Silk Sonic dropping the b-word, but it’s still possible to draw a line from Motown’s artifice to the contrived jokes and slickness of An Evening With Silk Sonic. As quoted in Kelefa Sanneh’s recent book Major Labels, Maxine Powell, the head instructor at the label’s charm school, told her pupils to “be natural, be poised, and be positive.” There’s no chance Ms. In his classic genre study The Death of Rhythm and Blues, Nelson George wrote that “Motown promoted Gordy as an affirmative, unthreatening symbol of black capitalism…Gordy clearly stated that his goal was to buy into mainstream standards.” To ensure the label’s artists passed inspection, Motown instructed its stars to cut a smooth figure. This is a cartoon revival of a well-worn aesthetic, and when so many of the creative decisions resist being taken seriously, any criticism makes you sound like a killjoy.Īs many have pointed out, the classic means of Motown production as laid out by founder Berry Gordy were as regimented as the assembly lines in nearby Detroit auto plants. (For my money, that song’s funniest line reading is Paak’s despondent yet fluttering “I wanna die.”) The videos are pure burlesque. The internet received the clip of Mars belting out “this bitch,” from the heartbroken lament “Smokin Out the Window,” and did the work of a crackjack marketing team by turning it into a meme. If anything, Mars and Paak are hamming it up harder on this collaboration than on past records. One way to dodge the smack of the yardstick is with a joke, and An Evening With Silk Sonic does not want for winking silliness. But any significant level of investment poses the question: When artists invoke music as beloved as Motown and Philly soul, how can anything they create measure up? Others will process this as simply a good time.
For some younger listeners, this may be their first full-length engagement with one of the richest chapters in music history. For a certain listener, this is half the fun: An Evening With Silk Sonic is an opportunity to prove your adoration and knowledge.
Other critics will surely pin down allusions of their own. Trap drums freshened up 24K Magic but there’s nothing comparable on An Evening With Silk Sonic, a loving yet slight act of nerd-dom.Īfter one listen, my scorecard noted the crystalline guitar glissando best associated with Motown session musician Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin (see: Marvin Gaye’s “ I Want You” or Ragin’s own “ Goo Goo Wah Wah”), the siren-like ARP synth from Kool and the Gang’s “ Summer Madness,” a whiff of the chorus from the Ohio Players’ “ Fire,” and the title of Rick James and Teena Marie’s magisterial “ Fire and Desire” (released in 1981, but close enough). They even enlisted Bootsy Collins to host their lean game of musical I Spy: “Fellas, I hope you got something in your cup,” the beloved bassist from Parliament-Funkadelic announces on the intro. As a gesture of commitment, Paak got his chest tattooed with portraits of Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and Prince. With period-specific instrumentation in place, the exuberant pop hitmaker and the acclaimed rapper-singer-drummer with underground cachet recorded as their ancestors did, with just one or two mics for the entire room of musicians. The duo sought out particular drum skins to better replicate the sounds of the studio during the heyday of Gamble and Huff, when those songwriter-producers polished soul music to an extravagant sheen. Paak recreate the rhythm and blues of the ’70s. After fiddling with the R&B of the 1980s and ’90s to great commercial success on 2016’s 24K Magic, Bruno Mars has assigned himself a more challenging project: Silk Sonic, a fidelity-obsessed act in which he and onetime tourmate Anderson.
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