- Daniel Sannwald
All the talk is of Miguel Pimentel as a 21st-century soul man—a modern savior of R&B. But the first musical sound on Wildheart is of a thick, buzzy electric guitar riff, the kind you’d hear in an alt-rock relic from the ’90s, or even tumbling off the locals’ stage at the county fair.
Guitars, in fact, play a central role on Wildheart, Miguel’s highly anticipated third album and the follow-up to his near-perfect breakthrough, 2012’s Kaleidoscope Dream. The lick that cascades through “Deal” has a funky dub feel. “Waves” is built on an uncomplicated rollercoaster of chords. Heck, the pulsing riff of “Leaves” is so reminiscent of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979,” Miguel reached out to Billy Corgan and gave him a writing credit.
In other words, Wildheart is as much a rock album as it is R&B or soul, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it by reading some of the record’s reviews.
“I think the fact that I’m of ethnic origin makes it really hard for [people] to just accept that it is very much rock ‘n’ roll. It’s hard for them to just say, ‘Yeah, it’s rock ‘n’ roll,'” says Miguel, son of a Mexican American father and an African American mother. “They always kind of want to tiptoe around it and throw funk in there and other things in there. But I think that’ll just come with time. With time and consistency, I think people will just let go of whatever’s holding them back.”