ROBIN THICKE: MR. HARMONY
Robin Thicke: Magic
Robin Thicke: Ms. Harmony
From Something Else (Star Trak, 2008)
I've always found Robin Thicke to be a curious figure in soul. It's not because he's white, though race is never entirely absent from any discussion of American music; it's more because he manages to be recognizably derivative on so many levels yet simultaneously, compelling too.
When Thicke sings, it's easy to trace the lineages he's tapping into: most obviously Marvin Gaye (though what soul artist doesn't try to channel Marvin?), Donny Hathaway, Smokey Robinson and a little post-Jackson 5, pre-Wacko Jacko, Michael Jackson too. Even on this new album, his third, Thicke's songs often call up the memory of someone else: "Hard On My Love" sounds exactly like a Lenny Kravitz tune, "Sidestep" has a Boz Scaggs-swagger going for it and "Sweetest Love" recalls Stevie Wonder's signature inflections.
In post-modern theory, they call this "pastiche" but in simpler terms, I think it reflects how Thicke has studied and absorbed these styles from the past and synthesized them into his own range of sounds. It helps that he's an expert craftsman, especially as a producer. He's especially found of acoustic melodies - a stark contrast to the synthesizer assault elsewhere in pop and hip-hop - and accomplishes an astonishing amount with small textures that, added together, can create a "big" sound. It's no wonder that everyone from Lil Wayne to Jennifer Hudson want to work with him but with this new album (his third) Thicke shows that he doesn't need bigger names just to make his own.
I don't unconditionally love Something Else; there's a few songs I can do without, especially "Shadow of Doubt," which leans far too much on an obnoxiously aggressive chorus. Other uptempo songs are better - the most likable being his first single, "Magic," which sports some fantastically dramatic strings and a bank of horns that crash in on the dancefloor. However, Thicke's main strength is with the ballads - not only are these where his musical talents are given the most freedom to build more intricately but he also tends to bring out his falsetto on the slow jams (vs. his faster songs which use his tenor).
Oddly, for a singer whose voice is clearly patterned off the soul legends of the '70s, Thicke's falsetto lacks the kind of bare-chested sexuality you could hear in the crooning seductions of people like Marvin or Al Green. If anything, at its most wispy (such as on "Cry No More") Thicke's voice is much closer to that of sensitive folk rockers like Nick Drake. There's an emotional vulnerability in both styles of singing but soul falsettos harken back to the ecstatic-ness of gospel (with sin and sensuality waiting in the wings) whereas even when Thicke is singing his bedroom anthem, "Loverman," his singing is just a tad too icy in timbre to embody the sexual allure suggested in the lyrics.
That cool-ness serves him well elsewhere however, especially on the album's sweetest confection, "Ms. Harmony." Here, Thicke doesn't borrow from soul so much as bossa-nova; the song's mellifluent guitar, soft Brazilian percussion and Thicke's own honeyed vocals bring the legacy of someone like Antonio Carlos Jobim into the present but without losing the romantic melancholy that bossa invokes (listen also to "You're My Baby" for another example).
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