A Touch of Charms – “We’ve Been Seein”

A Touch of Charms is a vocal group from Petersburg, Virginia. Their CD “I Caught An Angel”, made a major impact in Japan, and now the crew have released the single “We’ve Been Seein”. Part of what makes this collective immediately standout, is that vocal trios, quartets and quintets are no longer flooding the R&B, Soul and Pop marketplaces like it did in the golden era. In fact it’s a total rarity today. Right off the bat, A Touch of Charms show a solid grasp of harmony and a tightly polished ability that obviously comes from years of performing. While no one else is making this kind of slow jam since the 90’s and early 2000’s, “We’ve Been Seein” doesn’t sound quite as outdated as you might have expected.

A Touch of Charms fuse the tight harmonies, and muscular vocals of legendary soul men, with the production techniques, swagger and bedroom braggadocio of their R&B peers. Their diversity however while their songs no less testosterone driven they manage to sub the sexual braggadocio for rapturous joy, longing and love.

In short, much of what makes A Touch of Charms such a memorable vocal group is the same thing that has always made classic R&B/Soul music so appealing – their willingness to be honest and vulnerable without sacrificing one iota of their virility. All of this comes through “We’ve Been Seein” – a ballad about being in love with someone, but too shy to let them know.

So while the youngsters aimlessly gravitate towards the staccato monotone delivery of gangster rappers, cuts such as “We’ve Been Seein” showcase A Touch of Charms’ underrated strengths as the true renderers of the lost art called, the R&B/Soul ballad. Individually and as a unit A Touch of Charms bring an up close and personal intimacy and honesty that a lot of other vocalists just can’t match.

And if at first it may seem that A Touch of Charms’ strong vocals and razor sharp harmonies might be out of place in a world that seems to prefer twisted auto-tuned whining and crudely explicit lyrics, advocating substance abuse, stacking cash and sexual deviation, a couple of spins of “We’ve Been Seein” will quickly convince you otherwise. Their purified lyrical art, which eschews expletives and hedonism, steadily becomes as infectious as the smooth and warm harmonies.

A Touch of Charms set the tone for what it means to have a transparent dimensionality, both artistically and lyrically. Their remarkable voices have an all-embracing smoothness that ease listeners into their method of vocal seduction. Furthermore, A Touch of Charms’ passionate romanticism, and slow-burning semantics on “We’ve Been Seein”, becomes almost irresistible to the ear.

A Touch of Charms possess a disinfected depth that most artists in R&B right now, just do not possess. The group’s approach to music-making shows that artists can audaciously control their own narrative, without bending to shallow artistic and commercially induced trends.