In rock music, history isn't always written by the victors. Legacies are constantly reassessed; much modern criticism serves to elevate the underdogs of yesterday into the icons of now. By contrast, scan Billboard charts from the ’60s and ’70s and you’ll find countless chart-toppers who swiftly slid into obscurity, remembered only by the most dedicated golden-oldies station programmers and seasoned dollar-bin flippers. And yet these forgotten favorites can be more vividly evocative of a specific time and place than any so-called classics of a given era—and on his second album as Drugdealer, L.A.-based auteur Michael Collins crafts a pristine portrait of early-’70s AM radio by taking inspiration not only from the period’s definitive artists, but its discarded pop detritus, too.
Since Collins rebranded himself Drugdealer for 2016’s The End of Comedy (following loopy lo-fi solo adventures as Run-DMT and Salvia Plath), the project has existed somewhere between proper band and Brill Building song factory, with Collins recruiting guest vocalists to animate his tunes. Raw Honey assumes the same form and methodology as its predecessor, right down to the baroque instrumental (“You’ve Got to Be Kidding”) that introduces the record like a movie’s opening theme. (In true period detail, it goes on long enough to accommodate an entire credit roll.) But while Raw Honey’s cover art visually references the 1968 self-titled debut from avant-psych pioneers the United States of America, musically, it leans ever further to the right of the dial, venturing beyond The End of Comedy’s John-Lennon-via-John-Barry pop classicism to wade into the mellow-golden waters of post-hippie singer-songwriters and proto-yacht-rock.
On Drugdealer’s debut, Collins sang, “Were you saying something, or was it just ‘la la la la la’?”—which was pretty funny, given that it came right after the Ariel Pink-sung “la la la”s of “Easy to Forget.” But that joking line betrayed the serious anxiety of influence that can afflict artists enamored with recreating the sounds of the past. Collins’ songwriting is timeless in the truest sense of the term—he’s fond of upbeat songs about feeling down, and for the most part, avoids any temporal, geographic, or pop-cultural references that might tie a song to any particular date. Instead, he asserts himself most soundly through savvy casting. Fitting for an album that begins with the sound of someone starting their car, the rotating vocalists give Raw Honey the feel of a radio station keeping you company on a lonely drive.
As Collins admitted in a 2016 interview, he abandoned his previous solo set-up in favor of Drugdealer’s collaborative approach because his compositional aspirations had “outgrown my musical chops.” Likewise, his outsourcing of vocal duties presumably allows the songs to hit emotional grace notes his own modest voice can’t quite convey. A return appearance from Natalie Mering (a.k.a. Weyes Blood) on the sweet, slow-burning “Honey” deepens the sense of mystery in lines like, “you’ve got some things you can’t erase, and honey, I’ve got mine.” The cosmic country-rock of “Wild Motion,” meanwhile, gives Brooklyn cowboy Dougie Poole a vast desert landscape to fill with sad-eyed Elvis croon. But Collins’ peculiar personality is still audible in the voice of others: with the breezy “Lonely” (featuring a playfully forlorn lead from fellow ’70s-pop revivalist Harley Hill-Richmond of Harley and the Hummingbirds), he shows that, while anyone can rip off the Beatles, it takes an especially mad genius to produce a song in 2019 that’s a dead ringer for a Ringo Starr solo single.
Collins’ own voice is still tinged by a ’60s-psych aftertaste, which, when paired with the whimsical harmonies of bandmate Sasha Winn, recedes a little too easily into the retro milieu—the bright brass arrangement of “Lost in My Dream” makes a far stronger impression than the tune it’s meant to support. Fortunately, Collins leaves that affectation behind for Raw Honey’s sterling centerpiece, “Fools,” a cool, sax-smoothed cruiser that would’ve fit snugly between soft-rock relics like Ace’s “How Long” and Player’s “Baby Come Back” on the airwaves back in ’77. But while he embraces the previous generation’s coke-cutting soundtrack, Collins warns against the temptations of living in the past. “It’s not the same song you remember,” he sings. “You can try but it’s just plain wrong.” He might not be exactly following his own advice, but when the results are this charming, it's hard to hold it against him.
