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
