Anatomy Of A Love Song

Album review

Ten of the 14 songs on Anatomy of a Love Song were available in early 2013 as Back 2 Cool, an album that made its way to very few attentive fans. "Find a Way," written with Raheem DeVaughn, debuted as early as June 2012, yet it sounds fresh in 2015 and represents the makeup of Kenny Lattimore's sixth solo album. The singer is at his best when he cooks up modern smooth soul that evokes late-night, late-'70s/early-'80s R&B radio programming; a cover of a ballad written by the likes of Skip Scarborough or Leon Ware could have been inconspicuously slipped into the sequence. A few cuts -- such as "You Have My Heart," "You're My Girl," and "Still Good" -- are among Lattimore's career best, and there's a knockout duet with Lalah Hathaway in the form of "Nothing Like You." Among the newer songs, the top standout is "Love Me Back," a Bobby Womack-quoting smooth groove that ends up somewhere between Keni Burke's "Risin' to the Top" and Donell Jones' "Spend the Night." It sounds as if Lattimore felt absolutely no pressure in delivering his first widely released solo album of original material in 14 years.
© Andy Kellman /TiVo