RAPHAEL SAADIQ – STONE ROLIN’

Raphael Saadiq set the bar for himself with The Way I See It, his third album and stylistic opus – one of those records that glows in its rich simplicity and could stay in the player indefinitely. It must be hard knowing where to go after hitting the mark like that, a dilemma from which Stone Rollin’ suffered. The same vintage authority resides in the production and performances (almost all by Saadiiq) and the lyrics are as swinging as the revved-up Sam Cooke vibe needs them to be: “you givin’ me a heart attack, girl, I just can’t stand it no more” bring to mind the jiving pop of the late ‘50s in Heart Attack. But the planets that were previously held so casually in orbit before have drifted on their own trajectories, ignoring one another in their ambitions to be part of some new celestial discovery. For example, to clarify that tenuous metaphor, Saadiq’s drumming on Over You leans toward an anachronistic hard rock sound, which sounds more like a Lenny Kravitz groove than the Beatles feel that the slightly overused Mellotron keyboard would suggest he’s going for. Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano could have brought some much welcome space and sensitivity to Just Don’t but is unfortunately drowned out by the aggressive and unrelenting fuzz in the bass and drum mixes. Raphael Saadiq has taken us all the way to 11 before and it’s that achievement alone that opens the forum for this kind of nitpicking on an otherwise sterling release.

***1/2