Here We Go Again

Portrait arrived slightly late to the new jack swing party, but "Here We Go Again" demonstrates what happens when the template gets refined by craftsmen rather than originators. The production is smooth in a way that distinguished early-'90s R&B from its rougher predecessor — the edges sanded down, the transitions polished, everything designed to flow rather than punctuate. The vocal architecture is the song's primary instrument: four-part harmonies that move with the practiced ease of a group that has spent years in rehearsal rooms working out exactly where each voice belongs. The lead exchanges have a conversational quality, passing the melody between singers without losing the thread. The lyric explores the familiar territory of romantic recurrence — the relationship that keeps starting over, the pull back to something you've tried to leave — with enough specificity to feel personal rather than generic. There's a wistfulness underneath the surface sheen that gives the song its emotional dimension; this is not a triumphant return but a complicated one. Portrait never achieved the commercial sustained run of their contemporaries, which makes tracks like this feel slightly elegiac in retrospect — a perfectly constructed thing that deserved more room than it got. It belongs to a long road trip, or to the particular mood of Sunday afternoons that feel like Monday mornings are already on the way.