Broadway

Album review

Longtime background vocalist Myron Glasper and DJ/producer Eric "E da Boss" Cooke crossed paths while touring with Blackalicious. They didn't become retro-soul vocal duo Myron & E until the latter asked the former to help him write and sing over instrumentals recorded by Helsinki's Soul Investigators. From 2008 through 2010, the Finnish band issued four Myron & E-fronted singles on their Timmion and Nite-Club labels. Two of those releases were licensed in the U.S. by Stones Throw's Now-Again offshoot, and now here's the singing and songwriting duo on Stones Throw proper with their first album. The music was written and performed by the uncannily vintage-sounding Scandinavian benefactors, as Glasper and Cooke follow suit with their sweetly raw touch. The material that's most faithful to classic R&B -- including a brilliant opening ballad, the Marvin Gaye-like "Going in Circles," and their romping debut single "Cold Game" -- is pleasing and authentic-sounding enough, capable of moving bodies and stirring emotions with ease. If Glasper and Cooke encountered any kind of trouble while writing and recording their keenly arranged vocals, they're proficient at masking it. They clearly know their stuff, but they're pushed into more fascinating territory when the Soul Investigators switch it up on the spaced-out, reverb-cloaked "Back N Forth," where they make like dream pop duo A.R. Kane gone stoned soul. If it wasn't for Adrian Younge and the Delfonics' "Stop and Look (And You Have Found Love)," it'd be the spooky soul throwback of 2013.

© Andy Kellman /TiVo