“All the Love” – AM & Shawn Lee
Too early to nominate the Song of the Summer? Probably. But this one should stay in consideration, not only for its slinky, slidy beat, which patrols the razor’s edge between funk and disco, but for its honest, dare I say organic soundscape. These guys may construct songs while thousands of miles apart—AM is a singer/songwriter in Los Angeles, Shawn Lee a London-based multi-instrumentalist and producer—but they’re building from genuine components; as their press material puts it: “The instruments are played, the vocals are sung, and the songs are written.” It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.
The physical nature of the construction gives “All the Love” a resplendence difficult to generate digitally. Unlike our ubiquitous 21st-century beats, this is first and foremost a bass-and-guitar-driven groove. And listen to how spare and disciplined the guitar riffs are! Lesson number one: when the song is written, the players don’t have to show off, they just have to show up. Listen too to the instrumental break beginning at 2:15: you can hear the space between the bass and the drums and how the retro, space-agey synthesizer squiggles vertically down through it. And let’s not overlook what is almost always overlooked in any kind of funked-up setting: the melodies, which here are wonderfully concise and well-conceived—the verse with its carefully considered intervals, the chorus with its chugging, uphill, double-time hook.
“All the Love” is from the album La Musique Numérique, released in May on Park The Van Records. This one follows the duo’s 2011 debut Celestial Electric. Download above or via SoundCloud, which allows you to comment directly to the band, and spares me a bit of bandwidth in the process.
Fingertips 
This song is fantastic! Cannot stop listening.
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