Email this article | Printer friendly page Al GreenLay it Down Blue Note Roy YoungMemphis |
 |
With the help of the Roots’ Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and musical fans Anthony Hamilton, Corinne Bailey Rae and John Legend, Al Green has found his way-back machine. Lay it Down has the patient, sexy grooves that defined classic Green recordings, and his voice may betray his age onstage, but here, he glides to the sensual high notes and squeals like the lover man he was.
The songs, similarly, have the plain speech quality of his best. In songs such as “Just for Me,” “No One Like You” and “What More Do You Want From Me,” he makes the commonplace lyrical, elevating the routine of relationships by singing his parts them in these intimate musical dramas. If anything, Lay it Down may err on the side of recreating the past. The Dap-King Horns stand in for the punctuating horns on the Hi recordings, and their parts and sound could have been lifted off of those tracks. But it’s great to hear the Al Green you know and love make a CD today that sounds like the Al Green you know and love.
Long-time Green producer Willie Mitchell is behind the board for Roy Young’s Memphis, which updates his Memphis soul sound without making it slick. Mitchell frames the songs with a low, insistent bass, and a piano, leaving Young’s urgent, intimate voice plenty of room. Horns, drums and backing vocals are accents, but Young is the star.
Young has performed in England, Europe and Israel for most of his career, and his Jamaican birth only occasionally comes out, most obviously in the island-influenced “Half Past July.” Otherwise, the album sticks to the classic soul verities—feeling and its passionate expression. He, like Green, is also at his best when the artful touches are at a minimum. His version of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” builds beautifully and simply, and a simple B3 organ with a Leslie speaker evokes a world of atmosphere for “So Strange.” Still, like Green, he sounds like a man with something on his mind, and the songs only occasionally sound like performances.
The Louisiana Music Collective
Authentic New Orleans and Louisiana roots music resources.
