Dave Melillo has played fast and loose with genre throughout his career — early forays into acoustic pop (which he plans to revisit on an upcoming release), a stint with emo-pop stars Cute Is What We Aim For, more rock oriented material with Nocturnal Me — but through all his stylistic darts and dodges, the unifying factor has always been his gift for super-solid composition and a knack for memorable melodic hooks.  So while it’s no surprise to see Melillo take another stylistic left turn with the fun, funky Two Faced, his latest EP with Nocturnal Me, it’s also no surprise that it’s damn good. 

While Nocturnal Me had heretofore been a fairly straightforward rock outfit, the band seems to have morphed into a vehicle for the sort of smooth jams Melillo was previously releasing on the internet under the nom de R&B D. Blaaq.  The closest the band comes to their old guise is “Without You,” a white-hot slab of raging funk originally written by Melillo for The Cab, replete with vamping horns and a squall of a sax solo.  Frankly, it’s too good a song to be given away, and Nocturnal Me make the best of their crack at it.  Similarly, lead single “Get You Back” plays like an amped up Maroon 5 jam, a kinetic burst of white boy soul with sweet harmony vocals and an earworm of a guitar hook.

The other three tracks on the album play the rhythm and blues card a little more casually.  The love-em-and-leave-em “Weeknd” is as good an ode to poppin’ bottles and living the fast life as you’ll hear this year; if it’s an anthem for the playa’s, then “Love Is A Lie” is one for the playa’ haters. And “Call Me” takes a wait for an arriving plane and spins the metaphor into the stratosphere on a bed of dreamy keys and synths, the kind of timeless soul that smacks equally of Trey Songz’ singles and Michael Jackson’s deep cuts.

For fans of Nocturnal Me’s previous EPs, Two Faced is sure to be a bit of a head turner, but it’s hard to imagine anyone leaving disappointed; the band proves as facile at crafting R&B as they were at hammering out rock tunes.  (If there’s any letdown here, it’s that a few equally strong tracks from the D. Blaaq project were left out of the party). It’s anyone’s guess where Nocturnal Me goes from here; at this point, the only thing to be certain of is that the songs will be aces.

★★★★☆

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman