A Love Song Without Words | WFAE 90.7 - Charlotte's NPR News Source

Roy Hargrove has spent the past few years concentrating so much on his funk band, The RH Factor, that many fans had begun to wonder whether he'd abandoned jazz altogether. _Nothing

Serious_ is Hargrove's first straight-ahead jazz disc in seven years, and it's been released simultaneously with The RH Factor's _Distractions_. Listening to both discs

back-to-back reveals an extremely gifted trumpeter and composer with remarkable command. "Trust," one of _Nothing Serious_' highlights, delights not so much as a return to

form -- Hargrove never lost it -- but as an indication of how he subversively incorporates R&B elements in a traditional jazz setting without making them overly apparent. Besides

incendiary funk, smoldering jazz balladry serves as Hargrove's ideal approach, and on "Trust," his flugelhorn blows a succinct melody with the sensuality of an R&B

crooner. He nestles deep inside a spectral arrangement, delivering an evocative, soothing narrative that, without words, conjures the spirit of Donny Hathaway or Stevie Wonder. Because the

song doesn't contain any verses, it's easy to imagine its exquisite lyricism as a discreet love letter to jazz itself. _Listen to yesterday's 'Song of the Day.'_

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