Come Around and Love Me, Joe

You'd be forgiven if you thought this was some classic '70s soul. I think that's by design, actually. You don't mirror the sounds of this genre this closely without it being on purpose. Those sounds: the falsetto vocals that go impossibly high; scratchy guitar that contributes to the rhythm; buoyant bass that occasionally takes the spotlight; some sweet drum fills leading into the chorus; congas or bongos adding to the pulse; a pretty but canned string section; a prevalent vibraphone adding that cool jazzy retro sound; lyrics about love and loss and soaring hearts and heartbreak and the one you have and the one that got away. You know this sound even if you can't name it or break it down. Jalen Ngonda wants his music to hearken back to a simpler time (music-wise), and he more than gets there with Come Around and Love Me. I cue it up for Pam (who isn't writing a review; plz come back baby i miss u), and I get the reaction I expect, and the reaction Ngonda must desire: "How old is this?"

Whether that's enough for you, the listener, is a matter of preference. There is a good argument that copying the sounds that already exist to this exact degree is boring, that Come Around and Love Me amounts to nothing but a facsimile of every flavor of soul music that came before it (suggested album title: Come Back Around and Love Me Yet Again). There is an equally good counterargument that history and tradition and reverence to any sort of "canon" goes right out the fucking window when presented with a solid enough tune. I usually find myself a proponent of the latter argument—especially in this post-Greta Van Fleet world, where the new can sound great when the new sounds exactly like the old because the old was great too and so what's the fucking difference—and I found myself there this week too. I like soul music. I think it sounds pleasant. I had fun with this; why wouldn't I?

And since Ngonda is asking for it, I think a comparison to Record Club's other soul album, Be Thankful for What You Got, is warranted in this case. You can find all the sounds I named in the first paragraph of this review on that album pretty easily as well. What's interesting is that the outcome seems to be more or less the opposite this time around. I found William DeVaughn's songs (not including the immortal title track) to be pretty boring, but the story behind those songs retroactively made the whole thing worth it. With Jalen Ngonda's debut album, I'm digging all the songs—catchy hooks, classic sounds, a gifted singer with charisma to share—but the story isn't really there. (Despite the missed opportunities, like the fact that Ngonda and DeVaughn are both from D.C., and both had to travel elsewhere to follow their soul music muses.)

I'm not talking about the artist himself, though—not Jalen's fault that he's just some fucking guy or that he doesn't have a Wikipedia page—I'm talking about the music itself. This, too, seems to be by design, which is the only part of this endeavor I find a little baffling. If you read the transcript to the NPR interview, you'll see that Ngonda goes to great lengths to disavow any notion that there is any more to Come Around and Love Me than it just being a cool collection of good songs. The NPR dude is like "I have this theory that the songs collectively tell a cohesive story about two people in love—" and Ngonda cuts him off, like, "Not really." The host is taken aback, because here is a softball for the artist to build the myth. And Ngonda whiffs. "It's just rhyming schemes, you know?"

Well... no, I don't know that. I refuse to know that. Music is more than just words put together because they sound nice. It's a precious alchemy. Okay, so Jalen Ngonda wants to be humble. I get it. He wants to downplay the work of art that he just made. Fine. But I still count this as a missed opportunity to connect with the people who like this music. It's the age old question that this blog constantly asks of the people involved with it: why do you think that, and what does that say about you? Going in blind, I would have felt like I came away from my experience with Come Around and Love Me really knowing the artist that made it, but apparently that's not the case.

Should be pretty clear at this point that I'm a fan of imposing my own story upon the music that I consume. And this is an album review, not an artist review or an NPR interview review, so there's nothing stopping me from still doing that. E.g., that a "love song" means something to the listener if they know what love is and have felt it and especially if they have experienced its absence, and that by possessing the ability to create such a love song, you double the amount of love in the room, since now the love is extended in length from external subject to listener and then from listener to the song that reflected that experience. And e.g., that this pulls the artist into your story, and, like, e.g., just look at how many couples choose love songs like these as their wedding song, and so what does that say about the power that a soul singer-songwriter like Jalen Ngonda wields, e.g., etc.

I just found it really bizarre and a little off-putting that Ngonda doesn't even seem to realize what that power entails, or how to utilize it. Maybe he's spent too much time in the trenches, learning the calculus of "writing a song" or whatever. Well, in that regard, he's got it. He's got the equation down pat. The man can write a love song. The songs on Come Around and Love Me are aesthetically pleasing, no doubt. But I ask: Where's the heart? What does the word "love" even mean if it doesn't jump off the page? And how can we know the true depths of the love as it is presented in this music if the artist guards his own heart so tightly?

Still, there are other days when I'm pretty content to just sit back with an ice cold drink and enjoy the sweet stylings of classic smooth soul music, and so on those days, I like this a lot.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5