No lie, Detroit is the birthplace of smooth soul. Being a Southerner, myself, I've always much preferred the dirty sex-you-down thump of the Stax sound over Motown, but as long as there are Sunday afternoons on Earth, the liquid language of Holland-Dozier-Holland has a home. In the outer reaches of the Detroit area, a little white kid named Mayer Hawthorne must have had a whole lot of Sunday afternoons filled with scratchy Hitsville vinyl, because crap, the guy's got the stuff down pat.
Reputedly, when he brought his music to Peanut Butter Wolf (head of his label Stone's Throw), the Wolf thought he was peddling remixes or joshing him with some deep cuts of old Motwon stuff. And it can be kind of a lot to wrap your head around the fact that this bespectacled suburban nerd is crooning out this kind of Smokey Robinson vibe. But, damned if he isn't.
And don't miss your chance to buy a sweet heart-shaped 7" for the single "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out" on the Stone's Throw site, as featured in the below video for the song.
http://www.myspace.com/mayerhawthorne
No comments:
Post a Comment