SOLANGE KNOWLES: STILL STANDING SOLO
Solange Knowles: I Decided
Solange Knowles: 6 O'Clock Blues
From Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams (Geffen, 2008)
It can't be easy being Solange Knowles; as much as she may insist on her new album's first song, "God-Given Name," "I'm no 'sister'; I'm just my god-given name" the first comparison anyone will make - and reasonably so - is to Beyonce. When you're the younger sibling of the biggest R&B diva on the planet, it's inevitable that you're going to get prepared. The question here isn't whether you're going to avoid the issue - it's whether you can step up like Venus and Serena or end up as one of the lesser Baldwin brothers.
To her credit, it's not like Solange just dropped in from nowhere; this is her second album (though you'd be forgiven if you forgot her first one, Solo Star, since it didn't make much of a splash) and she was an important contributor as a songwriter to some of Destiny's Child's hits. And with Sol-Angel, she has one bonafide great pop song on this album: "I Decided" which came out earlier, in late spring. I have to be honest: my initial reaction to it went in this order, 1) "sounds like Solange is on that Amy Winehouse/retro-soul tip", 2) "this is a weird beat...did Mark Ronson do it? What? The Neptunes? Really?" and 3) "I can't help myself - I'm really feeling this."
And seriously, it is a weird track, obviously nodding to Motown style production but usually, that clap track you hear at the beginning eventually gives way into the full band but in this case, "I Decided" is all build-up and never really gets to the expected release. It creates a strange - and ultimately infectious - tension to the song, always promising to drop the musical hammer but instead, keeps you waiting the whole way through. I still can't quite explain it but of all the summer songs I went through the last few months, this was, by far, my sustained favorite. Bonus points to Solange for this line: "your mind is like a prism/for God's light to shine through." I just like how that sounds.
This praise aside, as you listen through Sol-Angel, what becomes rather clear is that musically, this is a considerably better album than it is vocally. Beyonce doesn't have the greatest voice in the world either but she's good at knowing its limits and working with it. In contrast, Solange's voice has similar shortcomings - it's thin, rather tinny and lacks range - and this becomes painfully clear on more than a few songs, especially the chorus for "Would've Been the One" when she sings in a higher register that really exposes the limits of her voice and range (which is a pity since it's actually a really great vocal arrangement...just not executed well).
The better songs here are the ones where Solange keeps in a lower register and doesn't try for vocal pyrotechnics. That's why I really liked the slinky funk of "6 O'Clock Blues," which has a smooth charm to it that fits well with the singing as well. This, unlike "I Decided" actually is a Mark Ronson production but instead of working with a live band, he samples from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings instead but the song neither sounds like a Winehouse or Jones tune; in that respect, Solange does a nice job of making it hers.
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