To make a very American, very timely analogy, Mahalia has smacked herself a solid ground-rule double with her second record. She may not have knocked the ball out of the park in one go, but she ended up on second with a couple of RBIs. Not too shabby. Did you get that?
In laments terms, Love and Compromise has its moments, but it’s all over the place in terms of success rate. Some of the record is truly excellent (see: ‘Karma’), some shows a lot of promise (see: ‘Hide Out’) and a chunk is borderline cringe-worthy (see: ‘Regular People’). So as a full album, it’s admittedly hard to pin down. But let’s focus on the positives for a moment.
There are numerous times on this record where Mahalia slips comfortably into a soulful mode, not unlike Amy Winehouse or Erykah Badu. It’s these moments that separate her from the pack of wild pop stars; they make you believe more fully the truths she is expressing. It’s also what makes me scratch my head the most. For an artist with such strength in this department, why hide it so deeply behind relatively derivative pop songs? Some of those are fine – they actually make me feel like I’m watching TLC on TRL back in the late ‘90s again, no easy task – but the others come off as same old, same old. Which leaves us with an album that’s just… fine.
Just to put all of this in context, Mahalia is just barely old enough to legally have a pint here in the US where we take that shit a lot more seriously than say, AR-15s? But, did any of us have our shit completely mastered at 21 years old? Hell no! Love and Compromise may not be a perfect record, but there is a huge amount of space to grow. It is glaringly obvious that Mahalia has a ton of soul in her, and once she channels it more, she will most certainly be a force to be reckoned with. I’ll be here in the dugout, eagerly waiting.
Haiku Review
Love and Compromise,
Is a record with soul, but
It’s buried too deep
Listen to Mahalia on Spotify and Apple Music.
