Nourished by Time ‘The Passionate Ones’ Review: Maximum Impact

Marcus Brown’s music is nothing if not socially conscious. “We can’t keep having masters/Baby, that’s all I want to say,” he sings on “It’s Time,” a track from The Passionate Ones, his second album as Nourished by Time. On “Baby Baby,” Brown jokes about being a minor celebrity in quick, semi-rapped verses but then pivots to point out that “if you can bomb Palestine/You can bomb Mondawmin,” an African-American neighborhood in his hometown of Baltimore.

Brown lays out the pressures of trying to make a living as a musician on “9 2 5”: “Working restaurants by day/Writing love songs by night/He can barely make it by/And the man ain’t sober.” For Brown, the grind—toiling away doing menial labor while trying to make it as an artist—was a necessity. This is reflected in the song’s house-adjacent beats, which are murky and agitated, a mood that hangs over The Passionate Ones’s 12 tracks.

Brown’s confidence lives up to the album’s title. On “Max Potential,” a brooding guitar riff establishes the mood as he vows: “If I’m gonna go insane/Least I’m loved by you.” Brown’s voice leaps out with the same intensity alongside equally ominous guitars on “It’s Time,” which finds him examining his ambitions, a little frightened at the prospect of achieving them. When he sings, “I look myself in the mirror,” the conviction in his voice insists that we do the same.

The Passionate Ones sets up shop comfortably on the border between R&B and lo-fi indie pop. Dirty Mind-era Prince and Dev Hynes are the closest analogues, with funk bass bumping up against rock guitars. Like those artists, Brown plays almost every instrument on The Passionate Ones. Songs like “Max Potential” may start out start out small, with a simple keyboard motif and an understated bassline, but Brown assures that the parts add up to make maximum impact.