If you’re a white man with a manicured jawburn and gel-spiked white-man hair — much like Pharrell’s latest soundchild, green-eyed soulman Robin Thicke — you might want to think twice before attempting soultry R&B melisma.
Sorry, but the whiteness is just too blinding to avoid. His voice, while adequately smooth and breathy, doesn’t hide the thinned labor of vocal chords born without the black gene.
At least on debut album A Beautiful World, Thicke had some sort of Euro-crazy Jamiroqui thing going on. But Pharrell takes his elevator treble beats to an even sparser level than usual on Evolution — add some melody-free, wannabe-JT vocal strains, and even the best speakers can barely push this out.
Light-brown-sugar “Idlewild” actress (and nude covergirl of his first album) Paula Patton is Thicke’s wife, stay-at-home “Growing Pains” dad Alan Thicke is his father and his album features the Neptunes, Lil’ Wayne and Faith Evans. Seems no tight web of connections could keep the colorless wisps of this awkward serenader from falling through the cracks.
Thicke performs at Spreckel’s with India.Arie on Oct. 21 and at the House of Blues with John Legend on Nov. 20.
