An Evening With Silk Sonic review: Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak ride a retro soul train

The present is a mess; the future is an apocalyptic question mark. Can you blame Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak for looking backwards? As Silk Sonic, the duo style themselves as 21st-century ambassadors of the kind of retro-soul swagger whose mirror-ball heart belongs to transistor radios and roller discos, not streaming services. (Even their name, with its implied visions of slip-and-slide bedsheets and private jets, feels like onomatopoeia.) And the frazzled citizens of 2021 embraced it: Silk’s first single, the sinuous hey-girl invitation “Leave the Door Open,” held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 twice this spring, and lingered in the top 10 for months.