Since January we’ve enjoyed a series of sweet, lo-fi soul singles from THEE HEART TONES We’ve learned that the band is a group of young musicians (the oldest is just 21!) from Hawthorne, California. They are Jazmine Alvarado on vocals, Ricky Cerezo on keys and organ, Jorge on drums, Jeffrey Romero on bass, Peter Chagolla on lead guitar, and Walter Morales on rhythm guitar and they came together through a love for classic soul – more specifically, the Chicano/Low Rider sound.
The band’s PR spin explains the band’s genesis “One day I got a DM from Ricky Cerezo asking if I wanted to write a song for his new (then unnamed) band”, Jazmine says. “I knew his drummer and the other boys from middle school, so they were familiar faces. They sent me an mp3 of an instrumental they’d written and told me they wanted lyrics”. That song, we’re told, ended up being ‘Don’t Take Me As A Fool’ . The song soon came to the attention of Leon Michels and Danny Akalepse of Big Crown Records who loved what they heard, signed the band and took ‘em into an LA studio to cut a whole album’s worth of music. They recorded 14 songs in just 5 days and, as we’ve said, since the start of the year, Big Crown have released single after single on the band and in doing so they’ve built up a head of steam for this, the eventual album release.
The ’Forever & Ever’ album is actually a 12 tracker and seven of the tracks have already been released as singles. They include the aforementioned ‘Don’t Take Me As A Fool’ which kick started the band’s career, the album title track (which was actually the first single) and the group’s cover (sung in Spanish) of Alvaro Carillo’s ‘Sabor A Mi’. (FYI, Carillo was a famous Mexican singer/songwriter and his ‘Sabor A Mi’ (translated as “Taste Of Me”) was originally released in 1959). Covering this one, sort of shows where the Tones are coming from as too does their cover of the Vanguards’ 1969 cult classic ‘Somebody Please’
All those singles channelled Thee Heart Tones’ spin on the Chicano/Low Rider soul sound and the 5 previously unheard album tracks mine the same vein, though ‘No Longer Mine’ is a little tougher and punchier but it’s still, like the rest of this charming long player, uncomplicated and with a sweet old fashioned, naive innocence!
(BB) 4/5
