Pitchfork

The opening moments of Shine Through are a bit of a trick. The first song, "Whole World", starts with chilly, desolate keyboards, then a dash of sci-fi synths. It sounds like an iceberg-- an odd choice for one of the year's warmest albums. Aloe Blacc is a Southern California-born multitasker. He sings, raps, plays trumpet and piano on his formal solo debut-- sometimes all during the same song. And he's managed to weave his broad vision of music, encompassing salsa and broken-beat and hip-hop and 70s-style soul, into an optimistic, effervescent piece of bedroom studio miscellany.

Twenty-seven-year-old E. Nathaniel Dawkins, best known as the rapping half of longtime hip-hop duo Emanon with DJ Exile, doesn't yet have the songwriting chops to sustain a sprawling 16-song effort like this, but his flashes of keen musical interpolation signal some sort of greatness. Whether turning Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" (here called "Long Time Coming") into a strung-out funhouse mirror cover or not getting caught up in the icky meta-ness of recording a song called "Busking" at a bus stop whilst busking, Blacc is clearly willing to take risks. But the post-salsa jaunt "Bailar-- Scene I" and "Patria Mia", a dedication to his parents' home country of Panama, are steeped in traditional styles, recorded without camp or irony. His admiration for institutions is audible. And "Nascimento (Birth)-- Scene II", an ode to Brazilian sweet-voiced samba icon Milton Nascimento, is a subdued forum for his majestic Terence Blanchard-esque trumpet playing. But this is more than that. The unadorned title track is more than just an interlude, it's the warning shot of a Mayfield-in-the-making, his stunning falsetto on full display despite bargain-basement recording.

Strangely, the moments that feel forced or contrived only pop up when Blacc decides to rap, the genre that got him started in the first place. The closing moments of "Caged Birdsong" feature a rapped verse that reveals a forceful tone absent throughout the rest of this delicate work. Same goes for the sexually aggressive verse on "Want Me". It's a stark contrast to the soaring "One Inna", one of the year's truly resplendent soul songs. Madlib provides his label mate with an atypical construction-- the drums are tuned way down and a xylophone melody bounces around under Blacc's tender crooning. Lyrically the song lacks ingenuity, though it rings true-- how often are we able to articulate how we feel about someone we love without clichés or catchphrases?

Aloe Blacc's really crept up on me this year, presenting himself at first as a genre oddball, unsure of where he wants to take his sound. Then he seemed merely an aesthete, unable to wrangle his loves into a cohesive whole. But time has uncovered a feeling composer unbound to the rigors of formatting. And while Shine Through has some fat on its edges, there's at least anticipation now for a new sort of soul artist-- one unafraid to pierce an otherwise rigid genre's decaying convention.