A few things have changed in the five years since Rhye laid a rose and a lace blindfold on pop music’s pillow. Producer Robin Hannibal quietly left the duo sometime around the release of their debut album, Woman. Under remaining member Michael Milosh’s command, the project has evolved from a studio confection into a real band, its members’ resumes bulleted with former employers like Kelis, Jhené Aiko, and David Byrne. Milosh also broke up with his wife, to whom Woman’s raptures and ecstasies were dedicated. He has a new love now, and she appears on the cover of Blood, rendered once again in artful black and white, even more naked than the woman on the cover of Woman.
Musically, though, Rhye remains very much the same, and Blood picks up where Woman left off: the tempos slow, the decibels soft, the heft negligible. Funk guitars twist like orchids’ tendrils. Disco basslines rarely rise above a muted thump. Textures—a close-miked hi-hat, the rustling hammers of a Rhodes keyboard—are as vivid as fingernails scraping raw silk. The mood is set with grace and ease.
The band’s reference points also remain the same paragons of soft, smooth, and sensuous as before: Talk Talk, for the attention they lavish on the minutiae of empty space, Al Green for his devotion and his sighs, and Sade, for, well, everything. It’s not just that Milosh’s voice often sounds uncannily like Helen Adu’s, it’s that Rhye’s whole bedroom R&B vibe draws heavily upon the sound of Sade albums like Stronger Than Pride and Love Deluxe, with crisp, rock-steady drumming perforating velvety blue keyboards and wordless coos. (Milosh has claimed that he’s “not a big Sade fan,” which, I mean, sure.) If Woman sometimes felt like a pastiche of Sade, Blood feels like a pastiche of Woman. Every detail is accentuated, every gesture exaggerated. Layered handclaps crackle like logs in the fire. Slinky riffs move across electric piano, guitar, clarinet, viola, and French horn. And Milosh’s voice is more delicate and more expressive than ever; it often sounds like he’s trying to locate the precise point along his vocal cords where a syllable vaporizes into a sigh. His concerns may be carnal, but he is forever on the edge of disappearing into a cloud of breath.
Rhye’s soft-pop revivalism is not quite as radical as it once felt. But Blood’s hi-def panorama of feathers and pearls is even more finely detailed than on Woman, and it helps that the band switches up its footsteps frequently without ever breaking the mood. The opening three songs go from languid slow dance to waist-winding funk to a sleek disco skip—though their unvarying palette and Milosh’s insistent whisper also mean that they tend to blend together. “Sinful,” the album’s dramatic closer, borrows from John Williams’ soundtracks and Ali Farka Touré’s desert blues; “Phoenix,” a late-album highlight, exemplifies everything thrilling about the band’s touch. The action on the Rhodes is so tactile it gives goosebumps; overdriven blues guitar riffs twitch and curl like a bitten lip. And Milosh packs real oomph into his vocalizations, even when you can’t quite figure out what he’s singing. If you could bottle the way he mutters “Oh my God,” you could make a mint. It is the sound of sex distilled.
