joe smooth - promised land

BUT, I think it's also kind of fake house. It's a radio record, not really a club record. It'd be much more appropriate turning up in polls of the best soul of the era - I'm too young to know, but I can't imagine anybody in the 80s shocking out to this stuff the way they might to Adonis or something. Definitely post-club music.

i found a copy of joe smooth's "rejoice" album yesterday. i'm only a few songs in but i love it!

track by track analysis? yes please!

well, i don't want to compare joe smooth's style with larry heard's but if this whole lp is as strong as the first side then this is definitely as good a house lp as "another side".

i'll do that later!

i want to listen to my other finds!

A1 Children Weep (4:20)

this is more disco than house for the first half, and then the drums switch up and it sounds like a robot drummer. and the vocals which were very simplistic for the first half start to get cut up.

A2 They Want To Be Free (4:53)

now this sounds more like what i expected. very chicago style programmed bassline and every few measures some scary disco keyboard fills. the vocals still sounds disco. also, the rhodes makes its appearance.

if there was a dub of this it would sound like early main street records.

A3 One Moment In Love (5:36)

oh this is awesome! it's got those sort of bird/beach sounds from sueno latino and pacific but they're all mashed together and it sounds amazing. it reminds me of the sort of thing you would do if you got like ten friends together and did a radio show on acid in the middle of sunny day in the throes of spring. really cool rocca-esque vocal synths over a beat that straddles loose sueno latino vibes and slamming house.

A4 I'm Not Givin' Up (4:33)

smooth acid house like larry heard perfected, but joe smooth still takes a pretty good shot at it. i'm glad he got someone else to sing this one. he's not bad, but his range is pretty limited for a full lp.

oh wow, the song totally changes up at the end! different synth patch and 303 programming, very cool sound!

A5 I Need Love (3:48)

arpeggiators! disco guitar stabs! alternates between vocal disco sections and very futuristic house. the bassline continues throughout. i don't really like the vocals on this one.

B1 For The Love Of Money (4:32)

somethings been nagging me so far, and i just realized that it is hamilton bohannon. i guess that family and community are big themes throughout soul music, but they have always come through very strongly in bohannon's music. this, childreen weep, they want to be free (about south africa) - they all have this feeling.

this is a pretty disco-y song. syn-flute solo.

B2 Smack Dab (3:27)

house drums and funk bassline. nice vocal patterns with lots of descending series that open up in a beautiful way. sounds really good. good dramatic string part before the last verse.

B3 Rejoice (3:52)

breakbeats. it's a familiar break but i don't know which one. really sexy early house sounding bassline. i think it goes between octaves, but i don't really know much about notes and shit. i think this is one of my favorite songs on this record. got those other vocalists again, a male / female duo. i love it when singers sing to each other like this. and joe smooth raps for a verse! wow.

B4 Nobody's Fault But Mine (4:40)

another hip-house track. joe smooth is not a great rapper, but it doesn't detract, and the arrangement is good. the eponymous chorus sounds like a sample. here is the saxophone. this could actually be a bohannon song.

B5 Sammy (I Miss You...) (2:50)

so it says in the liner notes that this song is about his late dog, sammy. um. it's a ballad. pretty bunk. he must have been really broken up over it if he convinced the label to put this song on here. guess this record isn't as good as "another side". oh well.

Joe Smooth - Rejoice

This song makes me so happy and sad at the same time. Like I want to dance but also cry, its fucking hopelessly hopeful.

love this one also.

"Hopelessly hopeful" - love that. I always associate this to Sterling Void's It's All Right - both gospel-soul songs in house form, gesturing to problems in the wider world (vaguely in Smooth's case, weirdly precisely in Void's) and so wonderfully, delusionally optimistic that they make even Curtis Mayfield seem like a glass-half-empty kind of guy. I'm guessing from the song titles that the quasi-political vibe extends across some of the album.

This fucking track, this fucking track!

First time I ever heard it played was by Daniel Bell, and someone came up to me, praising this song, and he told me what it was. Next time I heard it I had it stuck in my head all day before seeing Adam Marshall DJ weeks later at the same venue, and he played it too. I saw a copy of the Joe Smooth LP with a 4 minute mix on it for a lot of money in Montreal once, would have bought the single but nah. I'm going to Montreal tomorrow, should I change my mind, though. . .

Also, there's a video for it:

like its a pretty weird cocktail of faggy histrionics, pentecostal rapture and mechanised melancholia but its really really beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KAY8SzDHZw

love that 5 y.o. write up elan. the above track is almost as great as you make it sound from your description.