Out of Touch hinges on the yearning “Conceptual Mediterranean (Part 1)”, the seventh of its ten tracks. At this point, over two-thirds of the way into the album the yacht rock via early Eighties, late-night blue-eyed soul amalgam has bedded in to such a degree it’s become possible to home in on the song rather than its conceptual foundations. Way back, decades ago, the track could have passed for a Hall & Oates demo but here in the early 21st century it’s a triumph of putting theory into practice.
Finland’s Jaakko Eino Kalevi certainly knows what he’s doing and Out of Touch is an assured testament to his particular vision of pushing forward by way of reconfiguring his favoured vintage building blocks: a bubbling synth pulse; muted, distant vocals; far-away saxophone; insistent, sub-aqueous rhythm tracks. On the entirely self-played follow-up to his eponymous 2015 solo set, his 12th album – it’s hard to be exact about how many he has issued due his productiveness – offers few surprises but this time around the result doesn’t hang together as an album, as was conversely the case a couple of years ago.
Individual songs do work when taken on their own, but the uniformity of mood and sound render it hard to focus on what’s being heard as each song drifts by. At its core, Out of Touch does not feel finished. It was the same last year with his previous release, the disjointed 2017 collaborative album Orbit on which he was half of the Man Duo union. Heard live with a full band these new songs may take on a vibrancy but, regrettably, there is an inescapable feeling that when recording Jaakko Eino Kalevi would benefit from the input of something as traditional as a producer.