4AD
Everyone keeps cringing at the name PBR&B but I think it’s appropriate. Maybe it’s because I am finally listening to R&B beyond R. Kelly or because I really love how smoothly Pabst Blue Ribbon goes down and how I can drink so many of them without slurring my speech. Besides what else are we to call this new wave of hipsters making R&B? The Grammys tried and failed with Urban Contemporary. So yeah I can dig PBR&B especially when I’m knocking back a six-pack.
On the surface Inc. seem like a couple of blue-eyed newcomers from Bushwick who thought they could beat How To Dress Well at his own game by going slick and hi-fi. In fact Inc. (a.k.a. Andrew and Daniel Aged) have been kicking around for a few years now originally launching as Teen Inc.
Session musicians who’ve sat in with 50 Cent Elton John Pharrell Williams Beck and Raphael Saadiq the brothers Aged flaunt their chops on debut album No World . Andrew Aged’s croon is whispery warm and sentimental without any bombastic falsetto flourishes. Can you even imagine that in 2013? And these suave-sters write minimal organic arrangements free of left-field turns which might be too neo-soul and subtle for the PBR set.
Whether the consistency and sameness of Inc.’s music is enough to earn hipster love from those who jones for some experimentalism with their R&B I don’t know. But No World is an accomplished debut by two very talented siblings who imagine what The xx reinterpreting Diamond Life would sound like.
