When Amerie's "1 Thing" finally hit radio this March, it sounded like the arrival of spring. The song jumped and wriggled and moved like nothing else on the radio: a huge, loose-limbed, roiling, sweaty, berserk drum break, greasy guitars stabs exploding like fireworks. Rich Harrison, who produced Beyonce's "Crazy in Love", made the track, and it has the same sense of dizzy sunkissed freedom. But its greatest asset is the voice that cut through the drums like a sword, yelping and gasping and screaming for joy.
"1 Thing" is the first track on R&B; singer Amerie Rogers' sophomore album Touch, and the album never again reaches the giddy heights of that song. It never could. "1 Thing" is all sweat and teeth and adrenaline. After that opening salvo, Rogers slowly settles into the pillowy, luxurious tracks that Harrison creates for her. Harrison's production has an organic core. He spent his formative years working in D.C. go-go, and his compositions have that loose-limbed swagger, relying heavily on sampled horn screams and weeping electric pianos. But his work never sounds like a throwback; his tracks all have a glossy, processed sheen.
Amerie may be the perfect collaborator for Harrison's combination of Stax grit and Neptunes shine. Rogers has one of those thin, reedy voices popular on the radio right now; another producer would probably turn her into a sound effect, the way Lil Jon did with Ciara on "Goodies". But she has an urbane sophistication that sets her apart from the likes of Ashanti and Nivea; her precise jazz phrasing is the only saving grace on the mawkish ballad "Just Like Me". And when she has to, she brings out a fiery emotional center; on the breakup stomper "Rolling Down My Face", she squeezes across the song's tricky mix of regret and determination. Midway through the album, Rogers and Harrison come together perfectly for the second time on "Talkin' About", an impossibly catchy midtempo howler with a shifty drum track and the sort of glorious chorus hook that'll worm its way right into your brain. These two know each other well.
Harrison produced eight of the 13 tracks on Touch, and too many of the other producers' tracks don't fit into his lush tapestry. Rogers can't do anything with Bryce Wilson's squelchy Neptunes keyboards on "Not the Only One". But Rogers brings her personality to tracks that wouldn't have worked otherwise. When Lil Jon shows up for the obligatory club track (the title track here), Rogers' frisky, coy vocal and a nimble little conga bit turn an otherwise leaden, paint-by-numbers crunk&b; track into a sexy little experiment with Latin freestyle. It may not be "1 Thing", but it'll do.
