BLACK VINYL

Giveon spent three years making Beloved, or half the amount of time he laments squandering on a failed romance in "Twenties." Adorned with strings, horns, and Jeff "Gitty" Gitelman's weeping sitar, the ballad set the album's tone, both lyrically and sonically, as the lead single. Beloved is filled with many other dramatic, tear-stained expressions of regret, frustration, and heartache. Although it isn't an out-and-out throwback, it draws substantially from the '70s, most evidently the grand sweep of Philly soul and the driving rhythms and punching horns of Memphis' Hi Records, less so from maestros such as Barry White and Isaac Hayes. This isn't play-acting with a wholesale stylistic makeover. On the contrary, the likes of Sevn Thomas, Jahaan Sweet, and Maneesh Bidaye remain part of Giveon's songwriting and production cohort, and though the lyrics are sometimes general, more often they seem as specific to Giveon as his deep and graceful baritone. "Thought I was learning myself, I was just learning you/Is anything black and white when you're barely 22?," from "Twenties," sums up the sense of slight disorientation and philosophical reasoning that fuels the album. The imagery is most vivid when Giveon is either laying himself bare or articulating suspicion. In the very Memphian "Rather Be," he can barely entertain the thought of starting over as he clings to the past, "dancing to all the songs that you love, all alone -- lost in the dark 'cause you stole the sun." He works himself into a lather on "Backup Plan," what plays out like a smudged, extended, and downcast coda to Isaac Hayes' version of "The Look of Love," sensing emotional distance from his woman as evidence that his replacement is waiting in the wings. Only one song, the penultimate "Avalanche," captures a moment before it went sour. Even in that bright moment, the mix is dense with a hint of looming threat, enticing like an approaching storm. Giveon might view his six-year relationship as misspent, but there's no second-guessing the time he devoted to converting it into art.

A1        Mud
A2        Rather Be
A3        Twenties
A4        Strangers
A5        Numb
A6        I Can Tell
B1        Diamonds For Your Pain
B2        Keeper
B3        Six:Thirty
B4        Backup Plan
B5        Bleeding
B6        Don’t Leave
B7        Avalanche
B8        Good Bad Ugly