The Lush Pain Music of Nourished by Time

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Marcus Brown’s voice is a crooner’s voice, a baritone, emanating notes from some spot in his body deeper than his chest. Biologically speaking, this is impossible. But taking in his vocal, its dark timbre and real dimensionality, one feels perplexed and forced to come up with an explanation. Occasionally, Brown, who makes mesmerizing, lovelorn music under the name Nourished by Time, is a serenader reaching for the style of Jodeci or SWV—sinewy, solicitous, but alien underneath the ad-libbing. He can be scarily operatic, showing flashes of Meat Loaf. He can be witty and deadpan, like Nate Dogg, or a croaker, like Keith Sweat if he had a feel for play, say, doing purpos