G. Love And Special Sauce
Yeah, It's That Easy
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G. Love And Special Sauce
Yeah, It's That Easy
Epic/Okeh, 1997
RiYL: Soul Coughing, Parliament, Beastie Boys |
The young Philly guitarist's third album with longtime rhythm section Special Sauce is his most disparate and yet most complete effort to date. While in the past Love seemed to pick a groove and work off that throughout the record, here he experiments with different sounds, different song constructions and even different band lineups.
After his previous record, Coast To Coast Motel, Love expanded his musical repertoire by breaking away from Special Sauce for a while to tour and record with three other bands: the King's Court, the Philly Cartel and the All Fellas Band.
Yeah, It's That Easy reaps the benefits of this experimentation, as all four bands are featured. Working with different musicians has also given Love a more mature and varied outlook on the music he makes with the original Special Sauce.
Love's basic recipe for a song involves blues, rap and rock and roll. But he finally breaks out the old-style soul on Easy. While "Take You There" and "Willow Tree" are mellow, back porch lemonade-sippin' soul tunes, Love breaks out tight, funky riffs on the bass-driven "You Shall See" and the up-tempo title track.
The backup vocals also display Love's infusion of soul. In the past, only drummer Jeffery Clemens would complement Love's thick Philly accent on a few numbers. But Easy makes prodigious use of additional harmonies on tunes like "Take You There."
Love's expanded vision also works to improve the effectiveness of the stripped-down Special Sauce lineup. "Slipped Away (The Ballad of Lauretha Vaird)" works off a slow blues riff by Love and shows him exercising his vocal chords for the sake of a song's character. The protagonist, whose mother gets killed in a bank robbery, keeps mourning, "Mom, when are you comin' home?" in the cracking voice of a young adolescent.
Yet "I-76" is Love's most straight-up rap song to date, complete with a record-scratching groove that introduces the driving beat. A tribute to Love's hometown of Philly, the song jumps from rapping about the city's highway system to giving props to the '76ers NBA team, name-checking players from Moses Malone to Jerry Stackhouse.
The well-organized album climaxes with the nearly 10-minute "Pull The Wool," a classic blues-based tune that moves effortlessly between sections, juxtaposing acoustic and electric guitars.
The completeness with which Love approaches rock and roll is admirable. He has finally made an album that separately expresses all of his influences.
TROY CARPENTER | Troy Carpenter founded NATN from a Chicago apartment during the ambitious winter of 1998 with co-conspirators Ben French and Jonathan Cohen. After a five-year stint in New York, he and wife Lourdes have recently relocated to Indianapolis, where he spends days listening to music and nights in the kitchen at Elements restaurant. Musical heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Super Furry Animals. What else makes life worth living: Sushi, Phucty, runs in the park, and the Atlanta Braves.