If there's one thing
Fitz & the Tantrums know how to do it's make hooky, pop-soul anthems that feel like commercials for themselves. It's that unabashedly feel-good energy they bring to their fifth album, 2022's
Let Yourself Free. Beginning with 2013's
More Than Just a Dream, the Los Angeles-based band (led by vocalist
Michael Fitzpatrick) has inched further away from the quirky, home-recorded Motown vibe of their debut. The transformation reached its apex with 2016's "Handclap," an inescapable earworm that worked as both a declaration of the band's ability to write a hit and bit of a tongue-in-cheek threat. With
Let Yourself Free, they hold on to all of that mainstream pop savvy while still managing to throw things back to their humble D.I.Y. R&B beginnings. Heralded several months prior by the balmy summer single "Sway," the album is the group's best stylistic mix between their early neo-soul style and the slick dance-pop they've embraced. Of the former, "Silver Platter" and "Steppin' on Me" come the closest to recapturing the intimately sweaty, '60s collegiate house-party vibe of the band's debut. These are melodic, swoon-worthy tracks where the warm vocals of singers
Fitzpatrick and
Noelle Scaggs are doused in springy reverb and spectral R&B guitar accents. We also get the '90s new jack swing intimations of "Is It Love," where
Fitzpatrick frames himself with a crooning sea of his own multi-tracked backing vocals like a clone version of
Boyz II Men. More in keeping with the group's knack for writing catchy, soundtrack-level pop songs are the funky "Moneymaker," the piano-driven "Heaven," and the synthy, '80s dance-pop romanticism of "Big Love."
Fitz & the Tantrums know exactly what they are doing, and
Let Yourself Free is a confident, no-apologies pop album that still has soul. ~ Matt Collar
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