Figure It Out – Inches From Sin (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I probably say this every time an Inches From Sin record comes under my pen, but there is something about their music that feels like it belongs to a different musical conversation than the one most bands are having right now. Listen to Figure It Out, and you are at once reminded of the moment when Marvin Gaye jumped the Motown ship and began making the socially conscious soul music that would culminate in the landmark album What’s Going On. That sense of music as the start of a necessary conversation, of social commentary, of consciousness raising rather than mere entertainment, here, is palpable.

Figure It Out arrives alongside the forthcoming video release from this husband-and-wife songwriting partnership of Robert and Karen Holloway Brewer, and also offers a great insight into their latest long-player, We Need Love. Together they make music that is both seductive and soulful, the sort that wraps its creative charms lightly around you even as the lyrics quietly get to work asking bigger questions.

Blending understated sonics and easy groove, spoken word deliveries and crystalline harmonies, chiming guitar licks and liquid electronica, gentle brass stabs and relaxed beats, it packs a lot in. But, as is the case with all deft music makers, everything is cleverly combined so that every tone and texture, each instrument and melodic motif all rise to the surface and have their day in the sun.

The track moves with an easy, almost hypnotic confidence—rich soul textures, smooth rhythms, and a warmth that recalls the golden age of soul music…yet also the sound of taking those ideas into the future. And, as always, beneath that inviting surface lies a sharper purpose and, in keeping with the pioneers of the past, the song looks out across the fractured landscape of modern life and attempts to address some of the social and emotional fault lines that run through it.

In that sense, Figure It Out feels less like a single and more like a continuing chapter in a conversation begun more than half a century ago by artists such as Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and others. And of course, the real question isn’t why such artists are still singing about these issues all these years later—it’s why the world continues to give them cause to do so.