The debut from Incarnations makes no bones about what it wants to be. With its glossy guitars and crooning harmonies that bow at the altar of soft-rock; and dashes of Mediterranean influence flecked across its sound, it fulfils its ambition of sounding like a long lost rarity from the seventies. No real surprise then that With All Due Respect was recorded in a lazy ten days on the southern coast of Spain, it borders on ‘reviewers cliché’, but you can almost feel Tarifa’s seafoam splashing across the record.
In fact, no less than a third of the album’s breezy cuts open with the atmospheric sound of the beach, including lead track Make You Mine. With all three members – Daniel Collàs, Quinn Luke and Bart Davenport – delivering simple come-ons like “oooh I’m gonna make you mine / ba da dum dum make you mine” over an FM-friendly groove. It also pushes some cowbell to the very front of the mix, as if that Blue Oyster Cult skit on SNL never happened. It’s a logic that acts as the overriding theme for the album, as if the last thirty years of music never happened either. There’s no ironic authenticity at play, just three guys who obviously love the old guard of music that celebrated the sultry, smooth, soothing and other curved adjectives beginning with ‘s’.
I Didn’t Know follows, and sounds like a Motown ballad, or at least one that’s tipsy from a few pinà coladas and ready for the karaoke machine. Meet Me At Midnight could slot unnoticed alongside the soft-rock of The Eagles and, with its spiralling guitar figures and synth flourishes, Steely Dan. Let Love Find You finds its groove after another beachy sonic collage, it’s vibes, rubbery bass and stop-start drums knotting into an easy mood worthy of a holidaying Fleetwood Mac.
While the bluesy harmonica and crowd-chants of Hindi Ko Alam attempts to break the norm midway, the following The Selfish Guy eases comfortably back into the nostalgic mindset: a soul tune that Marvin Gaye may have buttered in his early career. Then There Must Be Love arrives on a groove borrowed from What’s Going On. Not exactly a coincidence..
It has to be said, while Incarnations push no boundaries, they don’t perturb to; perfectly content to cozy up to their well-drawn influences and mimicking their cornerstones with genuine alacrity. Critiquing them for their keen impersonations also rather misses the point; they wouldn’t adorn the cover with a hazy photograph of the members walking along the beach without wanting to hammer home the point that this is a relaxed summer record.
Of course the amount of enjoyment you’ll get out of Incarnations’ brand of, ahem, re-incarnation is in direct correlation to how much you enjoy this style of music to begin with. Given the right setting however, say stretching by the poolside or chilling in a cafe, its laissez-faire appeal is an obvious hit.
