The sound of their new collaborative album, “An Evening With Silk Sonic,” comes from a decade earlier, the 1970s, when the grit and funk of 1960s soul made way for a new embrace of sophisticated luxury.
Singers promised sensual pleasures, sharing ardent come-ons and velvety harmonies in opulent tracks, backed by bountiful strings and horns.
His voice and his verse-chorus-verse songwriting have harked back directly to Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, the Police and others, as he concentrates on thoughts of seduction, romance and, occasionally, winning someone back.
On his albums, named after places where he has lived, he switches between singing and rapping, and his lyrics take on contemporary conditions; he’s also a musician steeped in live-band soul and R&B, and a hard-hitting drummer.
For an album like this, Silk Sonic can use a co-sign from the elder generation, and the duo gets one from none other than Bootsy Collins, 70, the bassist of Parliament-Funkadelic — the band Mars simulated on the title track of his 2016 album “24K Magic” — and the possessor of the most liquid, self-satisfied speaking voice in the funk cosmogony.
Most of “An Evening with Silk Sonic” revives the sound of 1970s groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, the Spinners, the Manhattans, the Chi-Lites and the Delfonics.
“Put on a Smile” caps its confession of desperate heartache with the sounds of a thunderstorm, a nod to the “quiet storm” radio formats of the 1970s.
Between the ballads, Silk Sonic switches to funk.
The distance between the 1970s and the 2010s also shows up in slightly rougher language and more openly materialistic lyrics.
All in all, “An Evening with Silk Sonic” is a Fabergé egg of an album: a lavish, impeccable bauble, a purely ornamental not-quite-period piece.