Full disclosure: Pitch Slapped's brilliant brand of jazz funkaliciousness applied here to predominantly R&B/hip-hop source material is very much in my personal wheelhouse.

Full disclosure: Pitch Slapped, as ever, is really good at performing a cappella. Like, really, really good. Maybe better at their preferred genre(s) of song styling than any other collegiate group in my recent memory. Some of the solo work — looking at you Tyler Christian and Khaleb Roberts — is particularly remarkable.

Full disclosure: notwithstanding my scores, I didn't love Confidential as much as I desperately want to.

The first two paragraphs above, coupled with the scoring, should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about how objectively good the group's work is on this album. And perhaps that's not especially surprising, given that literally all of the songs covered on Confidential are the arranging work of the multi-CARA-winning, multi-hyphenate alchemist, Isaiah Carter — a former vp-er for the group during his years at Berklee, who has since branched out into acting (in addition to singing), and who still arranges now and again both for pro and other collegiate groups nationwide. Carter never met a chord he couldn't crunch, a vocal run he couldn't blend, a riff he couldn't re-harmonize. And his bag of tricks is on full display on Confidential.

Then again, that may perhaps be part of my "problem". The bag of tricks is a super deluxe mega luxury bag of tricks, but Carter seems to break it out on every single song. And not every song wants the same, or similar treatment. Sometimes augmenting the original with so much ornamentation is a lot of sound and fury. It's beautiful, complex, and impressive sound and fury; signifying "not" nothing, but less. Stated another way, sometimes less is more. This is especially true at the opening of songs, where Carter shows a predilection for having the group dive right in full-throatedly, as if we are joining the song already in progress.

On this album, at least, another nagging habit is the choice of repertoire that — for lack of a better word — is a bit monotonous. And maybe that's purposeful. A song that sits so relentlessly on one chord (What About Us?), or a pattern of two chords (Freakum Dress), gives Carter a blank musical canvas to throw in all his various bells and whistles and let the group riff and run to their heart's content. It makes for a creative approach to interpreting some of the less musically interesting source material, but that doesn't necessarily make it a satisfying listen beyond the first hearing.

The final quibble is as much on the group and the production as it is on Carter. And the issue there is the sort of "detached cool" that is inescapable in the group's delivery of many of these songs, which may not be helped by the very shiny production choices (even as expert as they are). Are You That Somebody is the one spot where arrangement, production, and performance all come together into something that feels energized, passionate, and therefore resonant. Much of the rest left me wondering if anyone other than the soloist fully knew what they were singing about. And in some cases (Misunderstood), I had trouble even believing that the background voices were listening to what the soloist had to say.

But for you, maybe none of that matters. Because this really is great work, even if it leaves me a little less "jazzed" than I had hoped it would. Your mileage may vary.

How does one continue to be this good, no matter the changes in personnel or the vagaries of music as an art form? Whatever the magical elixir is, Berklee College of Music's Pitch Slapped is soaking in it. It's common knowledge that people go to Boston to sing, and sing they shall if they are Berklee students or are community members who make it into the group. Confidential is just the latest example of this mastery of the microphone.

Sonically, this is some of the best-sounding music that I've heard from the group in a while. It's not often that I can just sit and reflectively listen to music, but I had to with this album. There are a bunch of micro-quibbles that I have with each of the tracks, so the scoring mechanism I used for this review was how much my eyes bugged or my arms flew up in the air (from exasperation or jubilation), or if my chair broke from dancing on it.

One of the quibbles is the relentless pounding of some of the tracks. Most of the songs get to this certain dynamic and just sort of train rails to the end of the song without ever dipping into a valley. There are moments of reprieve that are needed. So while the production is stellar, there could have been more manufactured dynamics to mitigate that tendency. Freakum Dress is a prime example with its wall of sound. More dynamics would have made me hurt my back from poppin' it and droppin' it low so much. Like, I got real close to needing to go to the chiropractor, but some piano sections would have sent me.

In the context of the album, Are You That Somebody is 50x better than the single that the group released earlier. And the single is pure gold! How the f*** is that possible, and yet, that's what they easily accomplish here. It honestly feels like a totally different song, and it has me slack-jawed, sliding down a wall. Like this is ascension on a whole different level. I know it's early(ish) but I'm calling it as the track of the year — or at least mine — as of the moment of writing this review. No, I don't expect you to experience in the same visceral manner that I do; but whatever aural entrancement you think about, Are You That Somebody surpasses that. Without a thought to the difficulty that might be. Tyler Christian is deification humanized.

I rarely give a "5" in repeat listenability, because let's face it, who really wants to listen to the same album after the 50th or so full listen? Apparently, I do, because on the 51st listen, I am still finding new elements on tracks that I haven't noticed before. Sometimes those elements are flaws that my bewilderment missed previously (like there's an overly airy support in the altos during the beginning of Freakum Dress that leads to overly pointed stridency in the Ring the Alarm callout), but yeah.

Isaiah Carter's arrangements here are as interesting and intricate as all of his others. Which is both a good and bad thing. Too much of a good thing is a reality for a lot of gifted arrangers, and let's face it, he epitomizes gifted. As a listener, I'd love a few more "KISS" moments to give our ears moments to adjust and reset. There are passages in What About Us? that give us those minute breaks, and the song becomes all the more pleasurable for that fact.

If you like jazz-influenced pop R&B, you already have this album. You had it last year before they even released it because you are that into the thick of things. But for the normal folk, pick it up and expose yourself to the glory. There's nothing confidential about it.

Ten seconds into Silk Sonic Intro, the only question going through my head was, "Is it even fair how good Pitch Slapped is?" It's been six years since Pitch Slapped's last LP Sincerely, and even longer since I've seen the group live. Without fail, the singers know how to set the impression that they're working on a different level compared to most other scholastic groups. Confidential's intro track is no different, and the rest of the album never gives reason to doubt that opening assertion.

For those who have never listened to a Pitch Slapped album, Confidential is an absolutely amazing place to start. From the outset, you'll get a sense of the group's identity — a full-blown R&B and jazz soundscape, close voicings with crunchy harmonies that fly by a mile per second, and incredibly agile soloists with runs fit for your local track team. I really love that Pitch Slapped leans so hard into this musical identity, as it's actually quite rare for a scholastic group to do so this deliberately and with such commitment.

Even more important is execution, and thankfully, Pitch Slapped is top-notch. As early as Nobody Else Gonna Get My Love, the complexity of the background vocal arrangements is incredibly noticeable. Bass lines, percussion, and every bookend part are all playing vocal gymnastics around each other. The counter-melodies and lyric embellishments demand multiple listens to grasp their full flavor. Production is rarely too heavy-handed. The focus is entirely on the raw voices, rather than applying many effects, giving the feel of authentically live voices. The most important piece, however, is that none of these parts step on each other's toes. The part interplay and chemistry are immaculate, and everyone sings with solo-like energy and intensity while also blending within their parts, yet presence is always focused on one singular place at any one time. Mixing and arrangement choices do skirt the line of being too busy at times, noticeably on Freakum Dress. Thankfully, however, every time the group almost crosses the line, they pull back just enough into a more focused and centered place.

The other dangerous game Confidential plays is sometimes feeling a bit too homogenous in its tempo, styling, and play. As good as Pitch Slapped sounds, even the best can come off as repetitive. There are three factors that keep Confidential sounding fresh and leaving you wanting more: (a) length, as eight tracks across 22 minutes is just amazingly succinct; (b) songs with major gear shifts, particularly the almost therapeutic slowdown on someone like u (interlude) and the pared back and haunting finale on Misunderstood; and (c) that Pitch Slapped occupies a very unsaturated genre/style space in scholastic a cappella music.

The only real major complaint I have is the album liner notes. Those provided to RARB had zero mention of original songwriters. Including these credits is an unconditional must. Please fix this in the future.

On one hand, I can totally empathize with the many trials and tribulations that come with making an a cappella album, especially when in a scholastic group. So it is completely understandable that there could be many reasons why it has been six years since Pitch Slapped's prior LP outing. On the other hand, six years is way too long to wait for a group as good as Pitch Slapped. Confidential affirms this impatience, being so good while reminding us to cherish these moments of brilliance — they don't come every day.