Miguel proves that he is destined for musical greatness even further with Wildheart (Deluxe Edition). After winning critics and fans alike with his experimental and trend-setting sophomore LP Kaleidoscope Dream, Miguel decides to stick to his guns again, but evolve and raise the bar for himself this time around. Miguel writes nothing but memorable melodies and his songwriting is the engine that makes Wildheart all work, that takes his affinity for funk, psychedelia and Prince, and turns them an album that feels totally of the moment. Those influences could overwhelm a lesser artist or pull him into the trap of corny tastefulness that afflicts so many.
What happens when the party has ended, the dance-floor emptied, and all that is left are spilled drinks and 3am paranoia?
It’s a question Drake and D’Angelo have wrestled through their careers and a cause of occasional anxiety to Prince, whose gilded sleaze has always carried an undertow of existential despair.
In 2012, the brotherhood of melancholic r’n b stars welcomed its newest member, Los Angeles crooner/wearer of furrowed brows Miguel Pimentel. As with his contemporaries his musical persona has a fascinating duality– on breakout hit Adorn he portrayed himself as a slow-grind Lothario even as the accompanying Kaleidoscope Dream LP painted a more complex picture of a sensitive young man unnerved by fame.
Such contradictions are a driving force behind Wildheart — a project which plumbs Morrissey-esque levels of self-doubt while sporting a cover image of the shirtless, tattooed singer with a naked lady crouched at his crotch.
That he launched the project at a club event at which he dressed head to toe in monkish white (and requested fans to do likewise) makes absolute sense.
There’s something almost zen about Wildheart’s swaying rhythms and melodies, no matter that the lyrics attest to a soul beset by temptation.
You may already be familiar with the single Coffee, though the album version differs significantly, with rapper Wale’s explicit cameo exorcised and the lyrics cleaned up.
Sonically adventurous, thematically mopey, it sets the tone for much of Wildheart: on opener A Beautiful Exit, Miguel deploys his sun-glazed falsetto in service of skewed alt-rock; subsequent standouts Deal and Wave graft addictive beats and chanted hooks to full-bore flagellation.
The result is the ultimate contradiction — a downbeat collection trembling with heart-lifting beauty.
On What’s Normal Anyway – the seventh track on Miguel‘s new album Wildheart – the Californian singer-songwriter laments his position in society’s pecking order: “Too proper for the black kids, too black for the Mexicans / Too square to be a hood nigga … Too opinionated for the pacifist, too out of touch to be in style…”. By the time he gets to the chorus, Miguel has turned the song into an anthem of disaffection that will speak to anyone who’s ever felt socially dislocated.
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But What’s Normal Anyway also serves as an accurate summary of Miguel’s career to date. His second, breakthrough album – 2012’s excellent Kaleidoscope Dream – scanned as R&B, but the tricksy song structures and predominance of guitars owed as much to rock music and psychedelia as they did to hip-hop and soul. And, while the album’s hit single Adore sounded like a less carnally-fixated version of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, the rest of the album found Miguel being unnervingly direct in lines like “How many drinks would it take you to leave with me?” and “Do you like drugs? … Yeah? Well me too”. None of this weirdness prevented Kaleidoscope Dream from being a sizeable success – it reached Number 3 in the American album charts – but it nonetheless set Miguel apart from his peers and created considerable anticipation for this, the long-awaited follow-up.
Compared with the maximalist approach of much of Kaleidoscope Dream, Wildheart is pared down: many of its twelve tracks are based around a single guitar part and supported by the subtlest of embellishments. At times, the pared-down sound is clammy and claustrophobic; on other occasions, it’s indicative of an artist who has absolute confidence in the strength of his songs and doesn’t feel the need to hide them behind excessive instrumentation.
His confidence is well-earned. The melodies across the board on Wildheart are lovely, from opener A Beautiful Exit’s weirdly Syd Barrett-esque verses through to the skyscraping finale Face The Sun (featuring unashamedly bombastic guitar work from Lenny Kravitz). In between, Deal is a murky funk number with a guitar part that sounds like it’s being emitted from the bottom of a swimming pool; Waves and Leaves are the kind of songs that an up-and-coming indie band would kill for, while the slow jam Flesh finds Miguel activating his falsetto to delicious effect.
Wildheart is a touch less carnal than Kaleidoscope Dream. However, on the one occasion Miguel really vents his sexual desires, the results are startling. On The Valley, Miguel sings about what he intends to do with – or, perhaps more accurately, to – his lover. “Confess your sins to me while you masturbate … I wanna fuck like we’re filming in The Valley / I wanna push and shove and paint your hills and valleys” while the chorus is delivered with the dead-eyed insistence of someone reciting online porn search terms: “lips, clit, tits…”.
Miguel Wildheart Album Cover
The Valley is one of Wildheart’s many highlights but the track’s priapism would prove, well, painful if maintained across a whole album. Fortunately, the overriding tone of Wildheart is tender rather than tacky. Lead single Coffee is the wholesome flip side to The Valley – a song about sex that focuses on the post-coital domesticity – “coffee in the morning” – rather than the sex itself. And Hollywood Dreams finds Miguel engaging in blue-sky relationship thinking over an irresistible guitar riff: “we could be better than heroes, baby … we could fly higher than spaceships.”.
The weakest track on Wildheart is NWA which, with its appearance from rapper Kurupt, is the most conventionally ‘urban’ track here. It’s “something for my OGs” on which Miguel walks “with a gangsta lean” and describes a woman who “just wanna fuck till she can’t move no more”. If there’s any irony in these lyrics, it’s buried very deeply. Perhaps Miguel was right about being “too square” to pull this sort of thing off.
Miguel Wildheart Album
This solitary misstep is, however, easily forgiven. Wildheart is a beautiful album from one of the most exciting and talented artists in music right now.