Miguel: Art Dealer Chic Vol. 3

The third volume in Miguel’s free Art Dealer Chic series is the weakest of the bunch. Volume 2, the high point of the set, was alternately sexy and self-critical, punishing and seductive, but the third entry doesn’t have the same sense of flair or variation. “Ooh Ah” works the heavy guitars and lusty angle that were effective in earlier songs from the series like “Arch N Point”. But here, it’s all thuds and no pay off, a chase with no thrill. It never develops the guitar thump, and ends up feeling crude and incomplete.

“Candles In The Sun, Blowin’ In The Wind” finds Miguel dabbling in societal observation: “Is there a god. . . what are we doing?” Quotes of a man saying, “We are all one” are spliced into the song, and an extended quote plays as the song trails out – but the instrumentation is not exciting, and the social commentary is stock. (It is also a stark reversal for a man who spoke about how selfish he was in the song “…ALL” from volume two.) On “Party Life” Miguel clomps along with phrases like, “We don’t want to think, we want to dance”. In contrast to the two previous iterations of Art Dealer Chic, the third volume feels like incomplete song ideas that he recorded and threw on to a free EP.