Young Montreal producer Jacques Greene is very good at one thing: extracting a vocal snippet from some all-but-forgotten R&B star of the recent past (Ashanti, Brandy, Ciara) and then proceeding to build a shiny and modern combination of house and two-step underneath it. His best tracks thus far are like graduate-level versions of Billboard busters David Guetta and Calvin Harris' shame-free fist pumpers; they're subtle and spacey, but Greene leaves in enough kick and hook to keep everything floor-friendly. In his world, voices are repeating ghosts caught between the beat. And, depending on the time of day, they can sound euphoric or a little lonely. Just look at the video for his track "Tell Me". There are two tipsy models heading back to their very expensive, very solitary hotel rooms after what we can only assume is a night of $28 Midori sours-- it's not a hangover clip as much as a still-sorta-buzzed-at-6-a.m. clip. Jacques Greene makes music for models to stumble back to their suites to. Nothing wrong with that.
Last year had him perfecting this formula across two excellent LuckyMe EPs, The Look and Another Girl, when he wasn't convincingly turning Thom Yorke into a proper diva and filling the geek-chic quota in pal Azealia Banks' "212" video. But Concealer, the inaugural release on his new Vase imprint, changes things up. The two A sides find Greene indulging his R&B tendencies more than ever before, with opener "Flatline" even featuring original vocals from fellow Montrealer Ango. But the track doesn't sound like a savvy spin on radio also-rans as much as a wannabe also-ran itself; the ironically flat lead vocal comes off like sub-par Drake karaoke while the skittering instrumental recalls Timbaland in latter-day "Apologize" mode. Clearly, it's one thing to gush about R&B heavies like The-Dream and Drake in interviews and cannily slip them into DJ mixes-- both of which Greene has done-- but quite another to successfully emulate them.
Much better is "These Days", where the 21-year-old once again squeezes the most out of a well-chosen sample-- Mario's 2004 album cut "Couldn't Say No"-- while also moving forward, switching out standard kicks for bottom-crawling tom hits. On the flip side are two more traditional two-step tracks, "Clark" and "Arrow", both unfortunately not quite living up to the lofty rep Greene has quickly earned. Whereas The Look and "Another Girl" displayed a tidy sense of dynamics and a just-right ear for attention-getting sonic finery, these two simply glide by on their own blandly classy ambiance. For someone who has nailed that exquisite limbo between foreground and background, Greene lets "Clark" and "Arrow" drift away too easily.
To reiterate: Jacques Greene is very good at one thing. That one thing is unique and not easy to pull off. And there are still undiscovered corners for this producer to take his sample-based club sound before he jumps into the realm of more traditional song structures and vocals (which probably shouldn't be thought of as a be-all, end-all anyhow) or extended instrumentals, à la the nine-minute "Arrow". So Concealer has all the marks of a transitional release, a feeler. While constant reinvention is a nice ideal, it's not for everyone.
