Mayer Hawthorne could be the cleanest and newest looking record sandwiched between Issac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield at your local record shop. It sounds old, scratchy, and raw, like it's still 1972. The thing is, Mayer Hawthorne is actually a "29-year-old white kid from Ann Arbor."
Excerpt:
Los Angeles-via-Ann Arbor singer/DJ/producer/multi-instrumentalist Mayer Hawthorne basically does everything on A Strange Arrangement,
his debut full-length for Stones Throw. He has a sort of throwback
Detroit soul sound and cites Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Barry White,
Leroy Hutson, Smoke Robinson, etc., as influences. It's smooth stuff
that ought to be enjoyed by a wide demographic. Maybe the Strange
in the album title comes from the fact that the somewhat nerdy
Hawthorne isn't your usual soul crooner? As the copy at Stones Throw
puts it:
Few expect such heartfelt sentiment to come from a
29-year-old white kid from Ann Arbor, but he has caught the ear of his
family at Stones Throw, as well as BBC Radio 1 host Gilles Peterson and
producer/DJ Mark Ronson.
Read the entire post, watch the video, and download an mp3
here. (A link doesn't get much better than that, really.)
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