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Rating: Great |
At a time when indie-oriented music fans have discovered retro soul, making records that contain all the sounds and almost none of the feel of vintage R&B, Curtis Harding is a breath of fresh air: an artist with a genuine gift for classic soul music styles but little apparent interest in nostalgia.
Harding's solo debut, Soul Power, establishes him as one of the best new R&B singers around. While the sound of these songs certainly harks back to vintage soul (mostly of the Southern variety), Harding doesn't suggest he's slavishly trying to replicate the past. Instead, this music fuses the sounds of the '60s and early '70s while injecting them with an edgy energy that's firmly contemporary.
Harding's phrasing is warm, flexible, and expressive without descending into the frenetic melisma that passes for 21st-century R&B vocals, and on these tracks he sings with the band, not over them; his interplay with the musicians is shrewd and fervent, and whether the music suggests the Rolling Stones ("Surf") or the Spinners ("Keep on Shining"), he sounds well-focused and respectful of his backers, who perform with a lean, determined authority on these sessions.
Soul may be Harding's forte, but he's not afraid to rock out on "The Drive" and "I Don't Wanna Go Home" (guitars dominate these arrangements), and the technique and production give these songs a natural, spacious sound that flatters Harding and the band equally.
Having worked with OutKast and CeeLo Green, Curtis Harding knows a thing or two about soul music, both past and present, and Soul Power is music that honors the rich traditions of classic R&B while keeping its head and heart in the here and now. Some say you can't have it both ways, but Curtis Harding is here to prove that wrong.
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