Born and raised in LA, but based in NYC for the past five years, vocalist and composer Michael Mayo has toured internationally with Herbie Hancock and has been a featured vocalist on a number of releases including albums by Kneebody and Ben Wendel. Cut at Figure 8 Recording, Brooklyn, with Grammy-winning producer Eli Wolf (Al Green, Norah Jones, The Roots) at the controls, Bones, Mayo's debut album, is a work of startling originality, presenting a musical sound-world which references everything from The Beach Boys to J Dilla. The multipartite ‘You and You’ perfectly showcases Mayo's magnificent writing: a killer chorus hook, surprising harmonic shifts, and metrical sleights of hand at every turn. The stunning, a cappella vocal polyphony of ‘Stolen Moments’ sees Mayo channelling one of his major touchstones, Bobby McFerrin, using a looper pedal to create a rich, multilayered vocal tapestry. Mayo's song structures firmly resist the formulaic, with the autobiographical ‘20/20’ ("Inside my mind there's a letter, it says do better next time") appearing to ride out on a dreamy, extended vamp, while in the ensuing silence, Mayo's unaccompanied vocal imperceptibly drifts back in to finally bring the song to a close. The interlocking motifs and shimmering iridescence of ‘What's My Name’ sees Mayo intercutting the opening section of the e e cummings poem, ‘Crepuscule’, whose vivid imagery ("I will wade out, till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers") also proved inspirational to Bjork, who set the poem almost in its entirety on her 2001 album, Vespertine.

The closing, all-too-brief ‘Hold On’ is a family affair, as Mayo invites his first-call session musician parents to join him in a beautiful vignette, with his mother Valerie Pinkston's lyrics urging him to find strength in those who love you: "When you don't understand, hold on with loving hands". Mayo's band provide absolutely stellar accompaniment throughout, following him down musical byways and around circuitous structures with complete conviction.