Mayer Hawthorne “Green Eyed Love”
To say the world needs another vintage R&B mimic would be like admitting that VH1 needs another ludicrous reality-TV dating show, but Mayer Hawthorne, the porn-ily monikered alter-ego of Michigan-born hip hop DJ Andrew “Haircut” Cohen, definitely deserves to take up space in your iPod library, if only so you could freak out your friends and parents with the endlessly wowing re-imagining of ’60′s and ’70′s-era R&B/ soul that takes place on his debut project, A Strange Arrangement.
Bearing a spot-on handling of the falsetto croon, groovy soul-bop, honey-coated soul balladry, and simplistic love letter poetics of yesteryear (all of which Hawthorne impressively played, wrote and mixed together by himself), Arrangement is so soaked in the vibe of Motown, Stax, Curtom and so many other labels of that era that on several occasions you’re nearly convinced that these songs were actually constructed and performed by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, The Temptations, Holland-Dozier-Holland or The Platters.
Standing out as one of the best offerings here is the album-closing “Green Eyed Love”. Whereas most of Arrangement settles on dishing out well-executed throwback confections without much of a nod to the present, “Love”, a goofy paean to the “sticky icky” (“My love, my green eyed love/ We’ll watch the clouds from above/ Come on, lift me up…”), takes Hawthorne’s retro-fixated template and gives it a fresh modern twist thanks to it’s stimulating electric guitar solo and it’s main groove: a slowly creeping, oom-pah funk bounce that comes across like a looser spin on one of Eminem’s cartoon-ish productions.
Below, check out the videos for singles “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” and “Maybe So, Maybe No”, plus a live performance of “Green Eyed Love” fronted by a rendition of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” we’d love to hear more of:
DL: “Green Eyed Love” (alt)
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