Intro: The Free Nationals bring you Beauty & Essex, England
I’m lonely, you’re lonely too/I wanna be alone with you
I knew this song would be dripping in sex. Slow, sensual friskiness (catch that opening ‘oooowee’).
So shame on me (and you, my reader) for expecting more from Anderson .Paak’s backing band The Free Nationals. Go listen to their tracks with AP — you’ll understand why.
Add guest singers, Daniel Caesar, the young soul connoisseur whose debut album Freudian is 10 tracks on sex and love, and Ruban Nielson, singer of psych band Unknown Mortal Orchestra (full disclosure: I’m a newcomer to UMO). Needless to say, it’s a “smooth” ride.
The throwback to 90s (and/or 80s) R&B and soul is dead on. Ron Tnava Avant’s gleaming, toy-like synths, Jose Rios’s ethereal, bright chords, the 80s-esque rapper gold chain with the “Beauty & Essex” pendant on the cover art.
It’s not hard to picture a backdrop for this song. I have mine, but what’s yours?
One massive period piece; it’s executed too well. Now the album (forthcoming…) needs to sound this way. Exactly. like. this.
Jk. No it doesn’t.
An aphrodisiac potion flows between Caesar and a woman as they try to feel out the all-important status: relationship or no?
Their silence, as Caesar describes, is eery but he revels in it. Which begs me the feminist question. Does he want a quiet, obedient partner or an equally quiet one?
He admits to being a hushed personality in an interview with ILY. So it seems like the latter.
“My favorite thing is when I find a girl and we can both be alone, while in the same room. We don’t have to talk. We can just do our own thing; it’s like we’re both there together because we care and respect each other,” Caesar said in ILY.
Next, Ruban. Wait…never mind. Like I said, I’m a newcomer to Ruban.
I did appreciate his drawling responses to Caesar’s calling chorus. So much that the heavily processed vocals on his verse are insignificantly drowned out of memory.
Now let’s go spend a couple hours with Daniel. He just asked us to.
