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"  In the annals of whiteness, Mayer Hawthorne is a glass of skim milk, a corpse pulled from a lake, a man so pale-skinned he&amp;#039;s damn near blue. On the cover of his debut record, A Strange Arrangement, he looks like Tobey McGuire as directed by Wes Anderson, making a donation to NPR as the Starlight Vocal Band plays in the background. He is that white. His name is Mayer Hawthorne, for chrissakes! But then you listen to Hawthorne&amp;#039;s music and you suddenly realize this thirty-year-old nebbish from Detroit is a good glory GODDAMN give the drummer some SOUL SANGER! A Strange Arrangement is a master class in soul music, jumping from Curtis Mayfield&amp;#039;s bongo-fueled funk to the slow-dancin&amp;#039; groove of the Stylistics. Fair warning: The LP doesn&amp;#039;t hit shelves until September. But the first single is already out, and it&amp;#039;s a killer. On &amp;quot;Just Ain&amp;#039;t Gonna Work Out,&amp;quot; Hawthorne cribs one of Bobby Womack&amp;#039;s classic spoken-word intros before leaning into an aching falsetto that invokes Smokey Robinson at his sweetest. And his talent doesn&amp;#039;t stop there: Hawthorne plays every instrument, and arranged the album, too. Fat stuff for a glass of skim. RELATED LINKS:  EARLIER: A Great Summer Album from a Great Music Web Site  WHAT I&amp;#039;VE LEARNED: Al Green  GUIDE: The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a6075/mayer-hawthorne-a-strange-arrangement-album-review-071509/>