Mayer Hawthorne & The County November 11, 2010

Mayer Hawthorne is a new school soul sensation, taking the Motown assembly-line production model and eliminating nearly every element but himself and a few hired hands. Few expect such heartfelt sentiment to come from a 29-year-old white kid from Ann Arbor, but he has caught the ear of his family at Stones Throw Records, as well as BBC Radio 1 host Gilles Peterson and producer/DJ Mark Ronson. Hawthorne’s hanging-by-a-string falsetto and breakbeat production are simultaneously Smokey Robinson and J Dilla. It’s not just throwback music anymore – this revival is all about progression.