Let Love Bring Us Together

On his last album Raphael Saadiq a twelve track love letter to the heyday of Motown and his new album, Stone Rollin’ is still in a retro mood but expands his RnB repertoire from the fifties roots rock to smooth seventies soul and still manages to sound as cohesive as The Way I See It. Really the only time Saadiq dipps back into the Motown pool is on the grooving Movin’ Down the Line.

The rest of Stone Rollin’ is like a compilation of great rhythm and blues music from thirty years or more ago. The album opens up with Heart Attack which moves like a Jr. Walker & The All Stars song. Radio has shades of early guitar players like Chuck Berry. Day Dreams sounds like one of Eric Clapton’s poppier mid seventies songs. Raphael gets his Stevie Wonder on during Over You. Oddly, Just Don’t starts off with the same guitar strums that begin Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer.

But the biggest standout track on the album is also the greatest song Saadiq has done in his quarter century making music. Good Man just drips cool like Curtis Mayfield when he was penning music for Superfly. The song is so great someone in Hollywood needs to write it’s on blaxplotation film for Good Man to anchor the soundtrack for. Seriously screenwriters out there, just expand the equally great music video that has already been released. The other album high is the antithesis of Good Man, the heavenly Go to Hell (I understand the irony, but the song is about someone trying not to go there) which floats through your ears before heading for a gospel ending. The song is a prime example than even though the songs he makes sound like they could be from an era long gone, Raphael Saadiq can still make it sound modern.

Song to Download – Good Man

Stone Rollin’ gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.