Mayer Hawthorne – The Ruby Lounge, Manchester – 27/5/10
4/5
By: Alex Hibbert
The mid part of last decade might have seemed flush with the noise of retro brass and an uncanny amount of people dredging up lost loves for the beautified crooners of old, but it’s fair to say the Soul Revival never really happened. Whilst Winehouse’s skewed beehive only seems to topple more precariously as her star glows ever dimmer and Ronson’s flourish has been ousted as just that, rather than any real allegiance to progression the newest mainstream star we’ve now been lumped with turns outs to be Plan B.
Who’d have thunk it? Not us, instead we spend our time caressing our love for the Real Soul sound with artists pushing the red ink stained envelope forward in their own hospitable manner. Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed, Jamie Lidell, and tonight, ex crate digging Hip-Hop DJ turned Soul revivalist proper: Mayer Hawthorne. Neo-Soul might be a more appropriate name for most contemporary Soul sounds (Lidell had Grizzly Bear, Beck and Feist appear on his last album; he’s also signed to Warp) pushing things forward, but Hawthorne does things differently.
Debut album A Strange Arrangement was an intimate affair; a collection of failed relationships and distant loves sound tracked by Hawthorne’s implicit attention to the retro detail. Its only flaw was the worry he was regurgitating rather than re-imagining; a gimmick rather than a diehard. But, as his suited band The County take to the stage tonight, launch into ‘Easy Lovin’ before Mayer runs out, inciting “yeah, yeahs” and screams before the songs over, entertaining that notion seems plain dumb.
There’s a list of things Hawthorne and band do tonight which sound, to put it bluntly, cheesy. He tells us he loves us, regularly (in fact his favourite term is that we’re “the shit”); he tells us we have to dance; “Who’s the mayor of Manchester?” He asks at one point, pauses, then answers himself, “yes, I’m the Mayer of Manchester tonight”; he screams “make some motherfucking noise” a number of times; he plays ELO’s ‘Mr Blue Sky’ for fucks sake! And at no point do you feel anything but entertained.
It’s like rediscovering the lost - hush now - fact that artists don’t have to sit on the stage and churn out song after song. Though he does that too. ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ becomes N.E.R.D’s ‘She Likes To Move’; ‘Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out’ becomes a lesson in reggae as the band chk chk their way through it’s breezy falsetto. He has a cheeky wink back to his Hip-Hop roots with a version of Snoop Dogg’s ‘Gangsta Luv’. Everyone’s dancing now. He holds a finger aloft as the intro of ‘Shiny and New’ starts to filter from the band (who’ve been introduced collectively and individually a few times at this point) tells us to wait, enjoy, then goes forth. The tempo shifts faster, Mayer talks less. People dance more. ‘The Ills’, gestating black vinyl labelled Stax and Motown in colourful fonts, burps out a pungent mix of old and new. At its climax the music stops, there’s a quick “thank you“, and they’re off.
Touting visions of what music was - at a time when bands pay too much respect to the square foot of stage beneath their feet - Hawthorne might have just redefined what it can be too.
Artists in this article: Mayer Hawthorne
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