Nick Hakim seems poised to make a great album. He’s a guitar-slinging soul singer who’s fluent in punk, jazz, psych rock, and hip-hop, a clear descendant of D’Angelo and Funkadelic. His husky voice and unpretentious guitar playing are ideal vehicles for decorative instrumentation: doubled saxophones, flickering Wurlitzer, programmed drums, the occasional synth. While his full-length debut, 2017’s Green Twins effortlessly demonstrated his virtuosic abilities, 2020’s WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD sagged with tired melodies and sluggish arrangements, sounding like a neverending studio session where every idea was recorded, even the mediocre ones. Yet Hakim’s talent, as ever, shone through; it was easy to sense a more potent, specific, and emotionally active version of the album buried somewhere in the original. His latest offering, creates the same dissonance between what is and what could be. Hakim’s talent is once again on display, but the songs here crumple with limp lyrics and listless structures.