Not many artists make such an immediate impact as Nick Hakim did with his initial, self-released EP Where Will We Go Part 1 & 2 in 2014. Even fewer keep the spell strong and in focus over the following years, but he has done that with a relatively sparse trio of albums; Green Twins in 2017, Will This Make Me Good in 2020, and Comet in 2022.
He has arguably maintain his appeal by pursuing what some might consider a single-minded stylistic approach of slow-burning deep soul and R&B vocals (anywhere between Al Green and Prince) inflected with a gamut of different stylistic touches picked from psychedelia and elsewhere.
Another few years later, and Hakim is back with I Can See – probably his best so far. It’s an album is full of seemingly big risks – or might seem that way on paper, but not in his on alchemic music ability.
Whether it was the situation Hakim found himself in (at the end of a record deal and a long-term relationship) or the obviously meticulous process in which he crafted this album (or the interaction of both), I Can See works from the opening silence of the title track to the stilling and stunning closer “Water”.
Like the jazz giant Ben Webster, Hakim skips any fast notes, unless you count a few closing seconds of “Soft Wet Clay”. This is always a risky tactic, unless you know what you are doing – tapping keenly into the emotions that propel such music, with the ultimate goal of creating something that brings you as close as possible to the listeners.
Possibly taking a few pages from the book that Lewis wrote on the rediscovered obscure classic L’amour, Hakim concentrates on embellishing the songs here with mostly intimate touches from psychedelia to what they now call ambient country – see: “7 Days” – and fitting those elements almost perfectly into his take on deep, late night soul, best embodied in songs like “River Rising”.
Throughout I Can See, he proves that old saying that “the devil is in the detail(s)”. Hakim makes it all seem so effortless, even though it is undoubtedly a long, painstaking process to make it sound so slow and perfect. Essentially, this is a brand new late night classic built on old traditions.
