Ricky Fanté: Rewind

The trouble with nostalgia, at least as far as music is concerned, is that while the past seems to contain more possibilities and triumphs than the present, those triumphs and possibilities belong to another age. No matter how effectively artists simulate the past, their simulations will still sound hollow. That's why Carl Perkins will be eternally cool and Brian Setzer eternally competent. Ditto Frank Sinatra and Harry Connick Jr., Sly Stone and Lenny Kravitz, and on down the line.

Newcomer Ricky Fanté sounds so good on his all-too-appropriately titled debut Rewind that it's almost possible to get past his nostalgia-circuit routine. Fanté is only 25, but he sounds like a product of '60s Memphis, and one day, that could work in his favor. Not everyone is blessed with a voice that sounds like a blend of Otis Redding and Al Green. The only problem is that, right now at least, Fanté's whole shtick is on loan from '60s (and occasionally early-'70s) Memphis and nearby Muscle Shoals: the soul choruses, the Stax horns, the tight arrangements, the phrasing, the lyrics, the look, the feel. Rewind's songs—which were written in collaboration with occasional Norah Jones muse Jesse Harris—would kill on an American Idol soul night, but on their own, they sound more like impersonation than artistry.

As impersonations go, they aren't bad: Rewind's material isn't afraid of cliché, but it doesn't really suffer for it. Songs about impossible love and the power of music are simply part of the idiom, and though they're not extraordinary on their own, Fanté breathes life into them. The problem is that right now, his whole career simply seems like an exercise; just a little innovation or inspiration (like, say, Andre 3000 building on Prince, not just mimicking him) would make him sound so much better. With soul threatening to undergo a full-on revival, Fanté has the raw talent to become a leading light, but he'll have to stop looking backward.