A winter with Silk Sonic

 

It is always highly satisfying when something that looks good, feels good, sounds good actually turns out to be good. The announcement earlier this year that rnb superstar Bruno Mars and noted polymath Anderson .Paak were joining forces to create a supergroup of sorts, Silk Sonic, was one of those things you wished would turn out as great as they appeared. The first single released by the pair back in March seemed to confirm that: chart-topper “Leave the Door Open” was an effortlessly sophisticated retro-soul gem that put an end to early speculations. Then what?

Then, we had to wait a painfully long time to find out more about Silk Sonic’s debut album, An Evening With Silk Sonic. We knew funk legend Bootsy Collins was involved as well, as if we needed any more credentials to be thrown into that mix. Actually, Collins was the one who apparently named the band, one hell of a feat if you ask us… Knowing Mars’ outstanding knack for infectious hooks and .Paak’s incredible versatility, we very much wanted to see how the result would look, and more importantly sound like. The chosen genre the project was associated with, 70’s retro soul/funk, was wide enough for the pair to play with our expectations…

And play they did, although more with the waiting bit than the actual work: as exemplified by that first single, the album is a remarkably cohesive and distinct blend of vintage sounding arrangements along with crispy clean contemporary production. In other words, there are no major surprises going from one song to the other, with the most different sounding being “777” which takes more from the late James Brown than other softer — and slower — tracks. But one could easily argue that is not such a huge departure… Meanwhile, “Smoking Out the Window” or “Skate” are clear variations on the very best we have come to remember from the 1970’s musically, i.e. incredibly soulful tracks that take equally from Isaac Hayes, Bootsy Collins, James Brown and Marvin Gaye to name but a few obvious inspirations.

The mash-up climax, if it were, is song #4 on the album, “After Last Night”, an incredibly suave ballad featuring Bootsy Collins and Thundercat to round up the dream team. A track that takes equally from Barry White and Usher — and those names were not chosen randomly: everything on the album feels like a fine-tuned game of matching classic and modern sounds to come up with a perfect, timeless soulful recipe. And the pair very nearly succeeds; but if Michael Jackson couldn’t, no one can…