Following Man About Town and the Party of One EP in 2016, Mayer Hawthorne appeared to be on a kind of hiatus from issuing solo material, as he spent more time with Jake One working on Tuxedo, the duo's post-disco project. Weeks after Tuxedo III was racked in 2019, Hawthorne started self-releasing solo tracks on an individual and sporadic basis. Eight songs dispersed over the course of the ensuing year are bundled together -- topped with an intro laid out like bicentennial-era Marvin Gaye -- for Rare Changes, effectively the fifth Mayer Hawthorne LP. The do-it-all gets a little help from fellow producers and songwriters such as SebastiAn, Wayne Gordon, and Sam Hollander, but this is mostly his show, a non-issue apart from the absence of female background vocalists (whose presence on previous Hawthorne and Tuxedo works has been crucial). Compared to Man About Town, the songs seem crafted with a little more attention to detail and no evident fuss. They're a little richer in low-end and inch closer toward unironic singer/songwriter soft rock without severing the R&B connection. The upbeat and easygoing tone set with the title song flows to the end, even when it's threatened by the remorseful "The Game" (bearing a twist of aching Delfonics) and the longing "Chasing the Feeling" (which recalls N.E.R.D.'s sweeping deep cuts as strongly as the Pharrell Wiliams collaborations on Where Does This Door Go). While Hawthorne is likely past his commercial peak, there's evidence here that he is still progressing artistically as a producer, songwriter, and vocalist. Take the pulsing "The Great Divide," a dead ringer for a Rupert Holmes tale of woe if it didn't leave so much to the imagination, or the liquid funk wriggler "Over," where Hawthorne's voice hits and maintains a scrunched-nose falsetto that was inconceivable back when he set sail on Stones Throw. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi

1		Intro
2		Rare Changes
3		The Game
4		Over
5		M.O.
6		The Great Divide
7		Only You
8		Chasing the Feeling
9		Healing

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