Miguel - Wildheart

Aside from this, listeners may be relatively unfamiliar with Miguel.  He's had a few hits, but nothing that would make him a household name.  Before Wildheart, his silky smooth to ruggedly soulful voice was mostly spent on standard top-40-sounding R&B fare. In hindsight, it's almost surreal to think about his earlier work in light of his 2015 genre-spanning statement.  From the first crunchy guitar chords over news broadcast dialogue, you have no idea where Wildheart is going, but you know it's going to be different. What comes next is a genre-bending R&B odyssey that's Prince-like in its all-over-the-place, lol-wut-ness (see, e.g., that bananas album cover).  Interestingly, though, the only things that sound like Prince are the final, perfectly executed guitar solo --delivered by Lenny Kravitz (!!) -- and the quirky sex jam "Flesh".  The Prince similarities primarily come from Miguel's indiscriminate, grab-bag, world-is-my-oyster use of any and every genre.  The result is a moody, sexy tour de force. Ethereal rock, dirty slow-burners, loose hangout funk, neo-soul, golden-era 90s alt-rock, grimy cow-bell-driven throwback soul, and the list goes on.  Miguel nails each one, but isn't interested in a Bruno-Mars style homage fest. He's doing his own thing, expressing what he wants to express through whatever sounds feel right to him.  That said, for all the song-to-song stylistic changes, the switch-ups are never jarring.  That may be the most impressive aspect of the album:  Miguel somehow makes the switch from thoughtful R&B ballad to arena rock anthem to hazy night-drive soundtrack all sound completely natural, with one flowing right into the next.  The themes are a little more straightforward, but always handled skillfully.  From the early-relationship head-rush ballad "Coffee", to the fame-at-any-cost romp "Hollywood Dreams", to the west-coast-weather-as-surprise-ending-to-a-relationship metaphor "leaves",  the lyrics are conversational, elegant, and relatively direct.  Miguel doesn't get weighed down with trying to say too much.  Pretty tough move to pull off a line like "I wish I could paint our love", but Miguel does it with ease.  In lesser hands, and with a lesser voice, it could easily come off as clunky high-school poetry.  Here, it sounds like an honest attempt to put the heady chemical whirlwind of a new great relationship into words.  It's not always classy, though.  Things get downright filthy more than a few times, but even those moments feel more candid than exploitative.  Miguel is a handsome dude with a knack for fashion, a boatload of talent, and a voice.  Honestly, based on his assumed (likely) current life experience, he's probably disproportionately talking about things other than sex.  As his chameleon-like sound-shifts feel natural instead of calculated, Miguel's lines always feel genuine.  Who would have thought that the same artist on the same album could deliver both a pre-chorus that is essentially just a crassly specific laundry list of female anatomy and an incredibly candid and enlightening exploration of the isolation, identity issues, and feelings of otherness that are a part of the multi-racial experience.  None of that would mean all that much if the songs weren't great, and they are great.  The only slight misstep is the doesn't-quite-get-there payoff in the sounded-enough-like-"1979"-that-he-just-went-ahead-and-gave-Corgan-a-co-writing-credit "leaves".  The problem, if it even qualifies as one, almost entirely lies with the bewildering decision to enunciate the break-open moment with a weak, dollar-bin drum machine that directly calls back to the Smashing Pumpkins tune.  Even this probably only stands out because Miguel proves he knows how to build and build and build and still somehow pay it all off with "face the sun", the through-the-roof closer.  Solitary misguided production choice aside, the album is stunning, start to finish, without ever feeling forced.  It's hard to produce an album this good that sounds so effortless.  Like he's just playing what he's feeling at that moment.  And, based on the album, what he's feeling most often is sexy.