Real soulful blue eyed soul singers are rare. Of course there are plenty of white soul singers, but few can touch the soul as much as their black colleagues. Mayer Hawthorne is a favorable exception to this rule. With his self-produced debut How Do You Do, he proved that he can easily compete with the classic soul singers of Motown and Atlantic. For How Do You Do he once again took over the production
… management in his own hands. This time he was not only inspired by the soul of yesteryear, but also by cheerful pop from the late 1960s from California such as Steely Dan and especially Chicago. This results in a cheerful retro album, because Hawthorne is not really original. How Do You Do could easily have been made forty-five years ago. Then it would have been a classic now. (AD)more
