For listeners who discovered Seven Davis Jr. via his joyous 2013 single "One", the release of his debut album is cause for celebration. It marks the culmination of a two-year period in which we've had only teasing glimpses—an EP here, a Prince cover there—at his unorthodox take on house and funk. But for the Houston-born, Los Angeles-based musician, Universes marks the completion of a much longer process and a vindication of his methods, as well as a rebuke against those who doubted him along the way.
Davis' moment has been a long time coming. He grew up in a gospel family and got his first look inside the music industry early on. He discovered house and techno while living, and dancing, in San Francisco; for a while, he ghost-produced for rappers, but his own productions, he has said, were deemed too strange. "I made a lot of this music many years ago and other labels and artists hated on me for it," he recalled around the release of The Lost Tapes Vol. 1, a compendium of his early work. "They said it was too weird, too different, sounded like drug music."
In fact, it was drug music, but at some point, he kicked his habits, and in that sense, it's possible to read Universes as a testament to the soul-cleansing power of funk. Once upon a time, negativity established the limits of his vision: "I Don't Give a Fuck", the opening song on The Lost Tapes Vol. 1, complained, "You need to go find a hobby" and "Stop being a hater"—understandable sentiments, perhaps, but the prosaic lyrics didn't measure up to his production talents or his powerful voice. But the far more assured Universes is swept up in the power of positive thinking, both lyrically and musically. The gorgeous, introductory "Imagination", a dreamy nod to the sound of D'Angelo's Voodoo, gives way to "Freedom", an uptempo riot of stuttering drums and disco vamps that can barely contain its giddy cheer. In "Sunday Morning", he pares down the production and puts his voice center stage: "Bet you never had a love like this before," he sings in a loop, and it's not just the lyrics that do the talking; it's his playful voice, swooping and diving, the very embodiment of joy at its most seductive.
"Everybody Too Cool", a sly romp splashed with organ and falsetto, is even more joyful, as Davis taunts, "Mr. DJ/ Don't play this in the club/ 'Cause people don't dance no more/ Everybody too cool for school"—a clever bit of reverse psychology, because good luck standing still in the face of his loping, rolling groove. Davis' own history as a house dancer is evident in his music's wild gyrations; even when he's laying down four-to-the-floor rhythms, he imbues them with more bump and flex than most contemporary dancefloors will be used to. Case in point: "Good Vibes", a co-production with Julio Bashmore that loops its squelchy chords and rickety drum machine, as though 1993's Daft Punk were trying to worm their way back to Minneapolis, 1985.
But there's a somber side to the album, too. In "Fighters", the album's emotional centerpiece, he layers his voice into a mournful, wordless mass, over which he offers a lament for America's racist violence. He keeps the details vague, but that winds up contributing to the song's depiction of fruitless violence and misspent energies, all of it summed up in the line, "Everybody's hoping for peace but they're doing it all wrong." It's the album's most musically adventurous song, too, skulking along in a strange, 5/4 time signature, the murk mirroring the exhaustion of the lyrics.
The album perks up after that; "Afterlife", a wheezy keyboard sketch, finds Davis brushing the dirt off his shoulder: "I will love, I will love, I will love/ Let 'em hate, let 'em hate, let 'em hate." And "No Worries", one of the album's sprightliest jams, is a kiss-off of the most carefree kind. Throughout it all, his arrangements burst with a vitality that belies their modest construction. The sounds may be humble, not that much more hi-fi than his early demos, but their vision of funk as lifeblood is never anything less than radiant.
