On Carter Marie’s More Love, the songstress experiments with layering her vocals to give her songs a ’90s girl group energy. For example, her harmonies on the intro track, “Blessing,” are beautiful. It also helps that the production on that track lends itself well to ’90s R&B. As I’ve said with regards to Carter time and time again, this ain’t just that “I wanna fuck and bounce” R&B. She’s one of those artists that sounds good on just about anything you throw at her, but her ear for production here? It’s the chef’s kiss on another EPAM collection. Everything here plays to her strengths, and those strengths are plentiful.

TL;DR: Carter Marie’s latest EP A Month EP sees the songstress experimenting with layering her vocals to give her songs a classic vibe.

The way she coos lines like “you like me more than I like me sometimes” on “Have You” had me weak. Why? Simply put, we all have those relationships where it feels like the other person puts us on a pedestal (or ones where we put the other person up). The relatable nature of Carter’s work has always been a strong suit and is on full display throughout this one. Like True’s The Jazzy Detour, Carter Marie’s giving us four tracks of who she is while also making love and its difficulties just sound so damn good.

On the title track, Carter Marie gives us a bit of a “lover’s anthem”: she says she doesn’t just want any old love; that gets old and these dudes are lame for pushing the same old same old. Instead, she wants that love love, the type of love that Marvin and Luther sang about, the type of love that gets your heart beating fast but gives your mind peace. This track, to go back to the introduction of this project, has a lot of layered vocals that give Carter Marie a sort of one-woman group vibe.

I feel I’ve been spoiled by Carter Marie’s EPs, though. Just like she wants more [actual] love, I want more R&B that sounds like her takes on the genre. When I don’t get it, I find myself going back to her stuff. Now, for her sake, tons of streams and buys are great. Go run her numbers up if you love any of the stuff I’ve posted of hers over the last few months.

However, it goes to show that there is a hole in R&B these days. There’s a lot of, as I called it, “I wanna fuck and bounce” R&B and not enough “sanging” in contemporary R&B. Not everyone has to go do infinite runs. That said, nothing but whisper-like R&B about sex and fuckboys can only get so much play in my playlists. Carter’s doing her part, though, to fill the hole and she’s doing her part damn well.

Check out More Love below and remember to support dope music in all its forms.