Boy

Album review

Melbourne DJ, producer, and keyboardist Harvey Sutherland (aka Mike Katz) dives deep into a retro-sounding blend of funk and jazzy soft-soul on his full-length debut, 2022's Boy. It's a potent, clubby, crate-digging vibe he's been conjuring since at least 2014's Brothers EP, and which he's continued to perfect on other EPs, including 2017's Expectations. These are hooky, groove-oriented songs that evoke the glistening, robot-alien funk of artists like George Duke, Andre Cymone, and groups like the System. While there are vocal songs here, Sutherland primarily crafts instrumental tracks that have the feeling of an extended remix of a pop tune with the vocals removed. Still, cuts like "Age of Acceleration" and "Slackers" are as hooky as any diva-led dance club anthem. Of the vocal tracks, Sutherland brings along several guests, including DāM-FunK, who lends his dusky soulfulness to the Cameo-esque banger "Feeling of Love," while "Type A" featuring sos (aka CLAMM frontman Jack Summers) evokes the '80s motorik Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk and Neu! While Sutherland has provided backing vocals on past songs, here he takes the lead on "Holding Pattern," a song that magically captures the louche, Hawaiian-shirt-and-mirrored-aviator aesthetic of artists like Steely Dan and Bertie Higgins. Many of the instrumental tracks are just as evocative, with cuts like "Michael Was Right About You" and "Time on My Side" bringing to mind the cognac and disco afterglow atmosphere of a '70s dinner party. Those tracks, as with pretty much all of Boy, sound like forgotten library music recordings from the '70s and '80s, rediscovered and reworked by Sutherland.
© Matt Collar /TiVo