I am not sure how it happened, but to my great surprise, I received an invitation for the release party of Sunny Levine’s new album, ‘Hush Now’, held at Citizens of Humanity, a hip fashion store in West Hollywood, where all the beautiful people shop all year long.
I went there without knowing anything about the guy and got to read his bio afterwards, learning he was the son of Stewart Levine, an acclaimed producer (Minnie Riperton, Sly and the Family Stone, Dr. John, Joe Cocker, Jamie Cullum), the nephew of producer QD3 (Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube) and the grandson of non other than legendary Quincy Jones! Furthermore, Levine is quite an accomplished artist himself as he co-produced Uncle Dysfunctional by Brit legends The Happy Mondays (via Noel Gallagher’s label Big Brother records) in 2006 and Ariel Pink’s ‘Before Today’ in 2010, among others. He even scored movies and supervised the soundtrack to 2012’s ‘Celeste & Jesse Forever’, whose song ‘No Other Plans’ was shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. ‘Hush Now’ is his second solo record, and he described it as ‘a weird, wild journey’ because, as he explained, ‘the songs were germinating in me for a long time, and then when they finally came out, it was a bit of an explosion’.
The party at Citizens of Humanity was the kind of party you expect in this neighborhood, hip and fancy, with immaculate outdoor sofas, great food, free cocktails and Instagram printers. I and my family may have been surrounded by famous people, but I knew none of them, except photograph of the stars Terry Richardson who was hanging around without his camera in hands. Sunny Levine was hugging many people and around 8 pm he took the stage with his musicians to play a few songs off ‘Hush Now’ in front of a crowd still sipping moonshine cocktails.
With his half-relaxed half-elegant look, his suit with snickers outfit, he began to sing a laid-back jazz and R&B influenced compositions, sounding like a lounge singer entertaining high society. The instrumentation was very discreet, almost minimalist and the result sounded a bit retro, even old-fashioned in the good sense of the term, with sophisticated arrangements, drenched in Levine’s soft reverb vocals, often going falsetto. It was soft as butter R&B, as if Justin Timberlake had decided to slow down, chill out and hang out at the beach. On that one, I may have been influenced by the black and white photograph I saw inside the store, showing Sunny Levine in full clothes, standing on a California beach with his dog, but, at the same time, the beach imagery is all over the album artwork. Although I couldn’t really guess it through the titles of the songs that he and his band played, such as ‘China Town #1’, ‘Saturn Returns’, or ‘No Other Plans’, but the album was about a strange but happy love story as Levine explained in an interview: ‘It was quick, we met, we fell in love but then she had to leave. Rather than be all ‘wah wah,’ I just made this record and dealt with my feelings through the music and let her do her thing. Almost the day when the record was done, I went to New York and saw her and then it was immediately back on, and she came back and moved here. This one has a real happy ending’. Awww good for them.
I heard a few cheerful noises coming from the audience as ‘Saturn Returns’ was going into honeyed bliss-out waves over a nostalgic ghost of the 50s, whereas almost the same kind of mellow ambiance was running through ‘Runnin Thru My Dreams’ or ‘Can’t Tune You Out’, and the guitarist was providing some ethereal back-up vocals on ‘No Other Plans’. I left the party feeling relaxed, thinking it may well be the kind of music you listen either immersed in the California sun or drowning in an alcoholic cocktail, but providing as much hush-ness as the title of the album was promising.
