AMG Review of Silhouettes

Richard S. Ginell
All Music Guide

With a mostly different team of musicians in place, save for Buddy Williams' drums and a cameo Donald Smith vocal, Silhouettes nevertheless continues the Lonnie Liston Smith string of sweetly ingratiating pop/jazz background albums. If anything, Smith's keyboard work is even more stripped down and lightly melodic than before, and his new cohorts create more mild-mannered, semi-funky backdrops that won't disturb anyone's sleep. Smith's "Summer Afternoon" is the most memorable tune; at the close, you hope that soprano player Premik will heat it up and scorch the air like Smith's former employer Pharoah Sanders, but no, the track fades before he can catch fire. Will a 21st-century lounge movement be interested in this type of thing someday? Who knows, if it can happen to Esquivel ...