Album review: Miguel, Wildheart

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1 Jul, 2015 05:00 PM3 mins to read

R&B singer, Miguel.

You won't find Miguel in the gossip mags. You won't see him cavorting with supermodels. And you won't catch him courting controversy on TMZ. In the overexposed world of R&B, Miguel is something of an enigma: we know little about the 29-year-old Los Angeles singer, and that's the way he seems to like it.

Wildheart, Miguel's third album of futuristic neo-soul and smoky sex jams, may not make you feel like you know him any better. But he seems to be getting to know himself.

"Too proper for the black kids, too black for the Mexicans, too square to be a hood n*****," he sings on the revealing Frank Ocean-style ballad What's Normal Anyway. "Look around, I feel alone, I never feel like I belong."

It's a line that could describe his career: in 2015, Miguel occupies the space somewhere between Usher and The Weeknd: there's no pressure on him to deliver chart-topping singles, so he's free to get down with his bad self. And that's exactly what he does.

Where previous albums had an eye on the bedroom, Wildheart sets up shop in an S&M dungeon. "Pour your sins on me," is one of the few repeatable lines from The Valley, a ridiculously raunchy ride through California porno-land. Likewise, Coffee leaves little to the imagination, a sticky ballad about the morning after, which has Miguel reminiscing about a night that included, "Drugs, sex, and polaroids." Flesh sends things right over the top, with Miguel wrapping his supreme falsetto around lyrics like, "I'm a slave to your flesh" and "Women put me right where I belong."

Once you've had a cold shower, you'll find there's more to Miguel than R18 activities. He's cut from the same cloth as old school stars like D'Angelo, so Wildheart's a lot deeper, more intelligent, varied - and weirder - than most pop-leaning R&B offerings. Several moments will linger longer in the memory than his bedroom anthems: NWA's sluggish thump that includes a grinding guest verse from Kurupt dedicated to the gangster rap pioneers, Desinado a Morir (Enter.Lewd) is a throbbing Weeknd-aping synth grind that deserves to last a lot longer than 90 seconds, GoingToHell marries G-funk to indie-pop and has Miguel admitting, "I'm a sinner," while Face the Sun is a soaring ballad that includes a WTF guitar solo from Lenny Kravitz. Yes, that Lenny Kravitz.

That album closer is a sign of Wildheart's only weakness - its reliance on cheesy, echoey guitars on several tracks that might do better without them. Those moments might make more sense when Miguel's here for Soulfest in October. But for now, Wildheart is not just Miguel's best album, it deserves to be counted among the year's best too. But it'll need a few listens first - just make sure your parents aren't around to hear it.