Album Review: Love Me for Me by October London
October London sang in the Grammys’ Roberta Flack tribute, and on Love Me for Me, he writes a bar tab and a busy schedule better than he writes the world.
October London’s contribution to this year’s Grammy tributes to Roberta Flack provides perhaps a more nuanced perspective on it all. Especially in that it is a record earlier this year that, perhaps, could have been less played up had October not partnered with DJ DMG, and had he not, in 2023, first encountered the record label that eventually produced this album through an impersonation of Marvin Gaye. True, 2024’s October Nights may have been marginally better than his 2023 effort, but there was the intervening fact that the song of the year award proved elusive. With Love Me for Me, Snoop Dogg and Soopafly are both producer’s (while MyGuyMars is responsible for 9 of the 10 tracks), they form the basis of a meager narrative of two persons and one thing she desperately needs from him (until the song ends), supplying him with a tablet and some paper, a sketchpad and a timetable, it is perhaps not surprising that his words go beyond the page.
“Pencil Me In” is a direct letter to the woman who is interested, lightly acknowledging her busy schedule with work, children, and a career. Before asking anything of her, he would like one small favor, a ‘little tiny’ favor. His requests are few; maybe all she will have time to do is meet for coffee and talk about her interests, maybe a glass of wine after work. If neither is an option, they’ll find an alternative.
A woman customer at a bar orders a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and pays for it herself. When he comments on this unusual occurrence, she replies that he thought she was a snack. In “Hooked (A Cougar’s Anthem),” upon her explanation of her time constraints, proximity to her residence, and preference for soft cotton sheets, he is baffled by how much this affects him. He is unaware of who is paying for their date. It is reasonable to believe that in “Silent Treatment,” a song about stopping communication and wondering what she is thinking, he is withdrawing and hypothesizing about this process. The most probable assumption is that he is trying to deal with the situation by suppressing his feelings, however, in the context of a typical song, from the line “Bye-bye, baby, I’‘m out the door/I can’‘t take the silence anymore,” one can assume that he must be somewhat courageous to write a final verse, and the title track could not be more sure of himself if it was.
October sings to crowds more than once, and the writing turns to weather each time, a rhythm to his feet, a spark to the dark, hands to the air, hearts to rise. Everything surrounding that on “My Favorite Song” is a chorus of color blazing in the sky and a melody for the stars to rhyme to. “Family Ties” gathers every shade in the world into one bright sun. Faith is the bridge that makes long roads bearable, and whoever is listening gets to let the music mediate their souls and hearts. A night out gets the same treatment: “Dance and Mingle,” all turn it up, make some noise, and ba-da-da-da-da. Those three lines could have belonged to any singer with a session that afternoon.
Her high heels hit the ground, and her thinness says perhaps to the question her head says yes to. Both are lines lifted from the oldest clichés in the seduction writer’s arsenal, which he has leaned on heavily. The rest of “Body Talk” is about eyes saying far more to each other than either would articulate at the party on any given night, every movement stating one sentence, every gesture another, her hips giving evidence to the charge that his chorus finally allows for the claim to his reading of her body language.
Breakfast is his job that morning, and the sketches are her creation. What he intends to do with them is to ask her to explain precisely what it is that has caught her attention. Curiosity is far more interesting than seduction. Love and peace, she says, hugging and kissing. He calculates the angles in the picture and deems that even Basquiat would have been impressed, and he does not do that lightly.
Above Average (★★★☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Your Girl,” “Hooked (A Cougar’s Anthem),” “Pencil Me In”