With a storied musical history stretching back decades, Lawrence Preston certainly brings industry credibility to his excursions into buttery, retro soul. Having cut his teeth in family gospel groups, he was scouted by Freddie Stone of Sly and the Family Stone fame and wound up as the bass player in the band of Dorothy Morrison, best known as the singer of “Oh, Happy Day”.
His resurgence with “Something for You” snaps us firmly back into the wheelhouse of Motown and 70s soul in the clipped funk and prominence of the bassline, syrupy backing vocals and clip-clopping guitar licks. However, soul is a genre dominated by the voice, and Preston endures this scrutiny. There is a gentleness to his soft tenor, and a smooth timbre that blends well with the languid, supple groove of the music. Hints of Marvin Gaye or maybe the Temptations emerge in the choirboy purity with which Preston swoops up into his higher resister midway through the song, but this is not a showily virtuosic performance—rather than erupting into melismatic hysterics, the vocals build gradually from a sultry whisper into that limber, willowy falsetto.
However, there is a clinical, stock quality to the music here, mainly springing from its dogmatically tight adherence to the blueprint of vintage soul, almost as some Platonic ideal. Although somewhat counterbalanced by the sweet, if a little cloying, song-as-gift conceit the lyrics explore, “Something for You” falls so cleanly into the soul genre that any kinks and idiosyncrasies in the music are ironed out into a blank anonymity. For all its indubitable musical proficiency, ironically the one thing “Something for You” lacks is soul. CO
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Listen here: https://www.vevo.com/watch/lawrence-preston/something-for-you/TIVEV1725150