Nick Hakim: Green Twins Review

By Alana Riddle
Music Journalist

Artist: Nick Hakim
Album: Green Twins
Release Date: May 19, 2017
Website: https://nickhakim.bandcamp.com

Nick Hakim’s debut full-length album is a blend of psychedelic, soul and jazz that explores the complexities of love. Hakim fuses these diverse elements to create a sound that somehow sounds like a modern blend of Marvin Gaye, Leon Bridges, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. The album feels dreamy from beginning to end, with some psychedelic breaks that are both unexpected and familiar. For example, “The Want” manages to be both dreamlike and funky with a solid drumbeat and airy, smooth vocals.

Hakim was raised in Washington D.C., where he became deeply connected to his Peruvian and Chilean roots as well as soul and classic rock music. Hakim has three brothers, and has attributed his musical style to being exposed to their eclectic tastes in music throughout the years. The diversity Hakim was raised around is palpable in his music, and it allows for the ideas and experiences being expressed to come through to the listener in a seemingly effortless and genuine way.

On the track “Needy Bees,” Hakim touches on the experience of longing to know a lover on a deeper level (“Swallow me and open up/I’ll live inside of you to find what you’re looking for”). Much like the experience of love in real life, the tone of the album soon becomes more melancholy and soulful. Overall, Green Twins is an intimate album that is reflective of an experience that is familiar to us all: longing for, and eventually wanting little or nothing to do with, a lover.