Al Green

Lay It Down

Blue Note Records

By Geoffrey Himes

As soon as you hear the push-and-pull bass line and the limpid blues guitar on Al Green's new song, "You've Got the Love I Need," you know you're back in the land of Southern soul--a world of bursting desire, throaty disappointment and snare-snapping momentum. These R&B rhythms are lean and seductive, rather than fat and bombarding as in modern practice, but they get under your skin just the same. And when we hear Green's voice--a fluttering high tenor that seems to swoon with the realization of just how much he needs his love--it could be 1974 all over again.

Of course, it's not 1974. Southern soul is no longer a chart-topping vehicle, and Green hasn't made an irresistible studio record since 1977's Belle. Lay It Down, the new album that contains "You've Got the Love I Need," comes closer than anything he's done in 30 years, but it still falls a bit short. Why this should be is mysterious, for the new disc boasts a backing band as good as the immortal Hi Rhythm Section and Green's vocals are still incomparably flexible and inventive. In fact, he has continued to be one of the most exciting live acts in American music long after he stopped making important records.

After Green sings the first verse and chorus of "You've Got the Love I Need," he turns the lead vocal over to Anthony Hamilton, the singer-songwriter who has made the two best Southern-soul albums of the new century. His tenor is lower and gruffer than Green's, but Hamilton uses the same syllable stretching and crunching, the same growls and squeals that Green also took from the black church. Hamilton is clearly Green's artistic heir, and on the song's coda, the two men exude the pleasure of shared talent and shared purpose as they trade improvised licks. You can hear a torch being passed.

Hamilton has enjoyed modest commercial success with his albums, 2003's Comin' FromWhere I'm From and 2005's Ain't Nobody Worryin', but nothing like Green's triumphant run of hits. Hamilton, who also co-wrote and sang harmony on the new album's title track, broke into the business singing on hip-hop hits by Nappy Roots, Eve and 2Pac, so he knows where the center of gravity lies in today's music biz. But he's smart enough to know the difference between financial rewards and artistic rewards and brave enough to act on that knowledge. Hip-hop can be a vehicle for great art, but Hamilton's particular talents, like Green's, are more likely to blossom in Southern soul.

If you possess a voice capable of endless variations on the same simple melodies and rhythms and if you're obsessed with the compulsions and frustrations of devotion--whether to a lover or a deity--gospel-soul is the genre for you. Like all 11 songs on the new album, "What More Do You Want From Me" is a pledge of unconditional love, but on this song an undercurrent of exasperation sneaks in, knocking Green's vocal from the percussive groove and causing him to stretch his syllables across the beat like a canvas cover across a pick-up truck full of jostling rocks. It's a performance that wouldn't make sense in any format other than gospel-soul.

If, on the other hand, your strengths lie in computer programming, literary irony, hyperbolic boasts, guitar noise, chord substitution or the angst of modern alienation, Southern R&B is probably not your best format. You have the gifts you have, and if you're lucky like Green, those talents coincide with a contemporary hit music. If you're unlucky like Hamilton, they don't.

As listeners, though, we neither benefit nor suffer from the commercial fate of a record, so our proper concern is with a disc's artistic pleasures. And while Lay It Down ultimately can't match the inspiration of Al Green Explores Your Mind or Comin' From Where I'm From, it does supply plenty of fabulous singing and playing. It also offers the gratification of hearing Green interact with his own heirs within the confines of New York's Electric Ladyland Studio. Usually we have to imagine the transmission of influence between one record and another, but here we can hear mentor and protégé working side by side.

Not only does Hamilton co-write two tracks and sing on them, but so does Corrine Bailey Rae. In the current movement of skinny young British women scoring hits with retro-soul songs--Amy Winehouse, Joss Stone, Duffy, etc.--Rae is the least strident and most interesting. "Take Your Time" is a 6/8 R&B ballad that begins as a duet between a B-3 organ and the horn section and then becomes a duet between Rae's soprano and Green's even higher falsetto. The two singers draw out the words as if they were following the lyrics' instructions to savor each moment. Rae's other co-write is "Stay with Me," which makes clever allusions to the vintage Green hits "Let's Stay Together" and "Sha-La-La (Let's Get Married)," but she surrenders her half of the duet to guest singer John Legend.

It's not surprising to find Green collaborating with Hamilton, Rae and Legend, three singers with obvious old-school soul tendencies, but it's revealing that the album's co-producers, co-writers and backing musicians include drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, keyboardist James Poyser, guitarist Chalmers Alford and bassist Adam Blackstone. Thompson is a founding member of the hip-hop group the Roots; Poyser and Blackstone have worked on such Thompson projects as the Roots, Common, D'Angelo and Bilal. Alford has recorded with Angie Stone and Mary J. Blige.

Thompson, the son of Philadelphia doo-wop singer Lee Andrews, is the crucial figure here. The Roots are a straightforward hip-hop group, but their use of Thompson's live drumming makes their concerts and their studio sessions sound more spontaneous than most rap projects. The source of that vibrancy becomes more obvious when Thompson makes this detour into Green's Southern soul. His stuttering syncopation on the introduction to "I'm Wild About You" and the deep pocket his snare slaps create on the same song push Green into his sexiest, most dramatic vocal on the record. The track demonstrates how a hip-hop musician can revitalize an aging soul stylist and how the latter still has some lessons to teach the former--even if Green never raps and the Roots never croon.

With its momentous meeting of the generations and its superb singing and playing, why doesn't Lay It Down live up to Green's masterpieces? Because the songwriting is too vague and safe for its own good. There are no explicit religious references on these 11 songs, but Green, still a practicing Protestant minister in Memphis, seems reluctant to say anything negative about anyone--or even anything too specific. The title song's entire second verse, for example, is: "Your love is a wonder to me; I just love you. Really, I would really love you for free, all I wanna do, all I wanna do. I don't want you to change your mind; I love you, baby, any old time." That's a far cry from "Take Me to the River" and its sharply defined complaints about the teenage ex-girl friend who "stole my money and my cigarettes" and left "16 candles burning on my wall."

It's a missed opportunity, for Rae is one of the more promising young soul lyricists around, and Hamilton is already a lot better than that. But Green shied away from anything so pointed. The way his voice snakes over, around and through the songs' generalities suggests that there's more meaning behind these songs than Green is willing to divulge. But without lyrics that can function as lightning rods to focus the amorphous intent, all that meaning remains so much background electricity. Perhaps Green no longer feels willing or driven to stick a wire up into the stormy sky. Perhaps it's Hamilton's turn.