Bubble Gum Boom Bash

I have been devouring Raphael Saadiq's new album, Stone Rolling for almost a week now. Upon reading an article in Wax Poetics, and discovering that Earth, Wind, & Fire's Gratitude-era keyboardist, Larry Dunn was included on the album, I snapped it up immediately.

I'll never forget getting my first Tony! Toni! Tone! cassette from my pal, Anitra Belle on my 12th birthday, and bumping "Feels Good" in the car with my mom on the way to 7th grade classes at St. Ignatius. But other than catching the big radio hits and that one hot ass video and tune with D'Angelo, I had only marginally monitored Saadiq's progress. I was well aware of his multi-instrumental talent, and generally regarded him as an artist of note, but still bailed on seeing his recent performance at Yoshi's for nonspecific reasons. I am kicking the shit out of myself after getting wrecked by this new album.

I say "bubble gum boom bash" in that wistful, youthful, dawn-of-rock feeling this album conveys with lots of cymbals and juggy, jangly guitars. Several other eras of R&B/Rock make appearances as well: fantastic strings, woodwinds, and horn arrangements layer over one another translucently to create a deeply saturated snapshot of several decades at once.

Among my favorites, "Go To Hell" opens up the album as its second track and pretty much lifts its skirt at you and shows you what it's got. So many elements, such a natural progression. Apex presents as a hopeful and joyous chorus of "let love bring us together" while horns and strings swell over a synthy woodwind tune that reminds me of those old, sped-up, time-lapse filmstrip soundtracks of seeds sprouting. Not what you anticipate from the title of the tune.

"Over You" just grabs my little high school heart strings and yanks the shit out them. Short and brooding, and deliciously desperate. The title track is quickly becoming my inner anthem. But it's two particular tracks in sequence that really seal the deal for me.

"Moving down the Line" opens with a yearning exclamation, then cuts directly to one of the steadiest rolls on record. Simple in pattern and phrasing, keeping to blues roots, but punctuated gradually with shining vocal, horn, and string parts. The 40s through the late 70s incorporate themselves as matter-of-factly as the birds and the bees. For such combined elements to come off this organically, and carefully dodging trite while paying homage, one must have a well-articulated perspective of the way humans respond to music. It is a common, continuous pursuit for many artists to spin nostalgia into a current context. Outkast accomplished this similarly with the Speakerboxx/The Love Below albums.

The next track, "Just Don't" also builds layer by layer, really sitting on that ride cymbal. A very Jackson 5-sounding bass and guitar coupling drops into sitar. Then the filmstrip soundtrack sounds fall in again, as I realize that it's Larry Dunn of Earth, Wind, & Fire. He takes the bubble gum, the boom, and the bash to the outro on a damn magic carpet. I suddenly thought that Saadiq was pretty much the brightest guy on the planet. (You will learn that I am easily one of the world's most intense EWF fans.)

Saadiq mentions in the Wax Poetics article growing up in Oakland, CA and learning how to play pretty much everything (as he does on much of the album), because everyone played something where he grew up. They'd trade off and screw around. Also learned from this article that Saadiq toured with Prince right out of high school, and about his primary attraction to guitar. Stating things like, not knowing how to do Ernie Isley's "Voyage to Atlantis" disqualified you from being included in any bands of merit.

I'm still chewing on this album, but what I believe to be resolute about is that this is not "just another retro record." While process is a large part of this album that may be lost on many, Saadiq is managing to stay poignantly relevant with his content and arrangement. A few tracks fall a little short, resembling more of a caricature of an era, but his ratio isn't bad for successes and thus these tracks are forgivable ("Radio," "Daydreams"). The real winner for me lies in the density of the arrangements, which is kind of the irony in the album. Much of the production is roughly pared down, but we have this symphonic quality happening in the sheer number of parts folding in and out of one another. This was nearly impossible during many of the eras represented with the level of technologies then available, but points to rare exceptions such as Brian Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds. I'm very excited by this, as I do react to Stone Rolling in similar ways as I have to Pet Sounds: rapid heart beat, swelling nostalgia, and a vaguely dark sense of yearning. These combined represent for me some of the greatest pleasures of living and breathing.