Don’t call it a comeback — he’s been here for years. Well, he’s been at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, Tenn., the church he founded and at which he has been the pastor for over 20 years.
Al Green went from being the biggest R&B star in the world to being a somewhat-reclusive preacher, taking his supple vocal style and deep gospel sensibility from the dance floor and bedroom back to its roots in the church.
Although he’s recorded a series of gospel albums since his retirement from secular music (plus one album of R&B material in the mid-1990s) and though he has started touring more frequently in the last few years, playing to crowds as ecstatic as ever, basically the only place to hear Rev. Green sing was in the context of his services, legendary for their intensity and for the Reverend’s engagement with the power of the spirit.
However, with the just-released I Can’t Stop, Al Green has returned to his throne as the last of the great soul singers. Working once again with Willie Mitchell, who co-wrote and produced his string of 1970s classics on Hi Records, and many of the musicians with whom he recorded during his heyday (including two of the Hodges Brothers, the backbone of the mighty Hi Rhythm Section), Green performs a top-shelf slate of new material that firmly re-establishes him as back in full effect.
From the first sweeping notes of track one, the title song, it is very clear that the reconnection between Green, Mitchell and the Hi musicians will not be one of the all-too-frequent disappointments that such out-of-context reunions can result in. Green is in fine voice, hitting the highest of his piercing falsettos with no discernible difficulty while displaying a slightly more gravelly and weathered lower register that one can chalk up to twenty more years of gospel shouts.
Mitchell has always known how best to mix Green’s instrument, which is as good a voice as American music has ever seen but which requires the proper sonic surroundings for its gifts to shine brightest, and there is nary a track on which the two men don’t click as they did before. Green’s previous return to R&B, a Mitchell-less recording he made in 1995, suffered from a thin mix and synth-heavy production that didn’t allow for the characteristic strut of snare, horns and organ that drove his greatest hits.
Luckily, and not surprisingly, the architect of that sound — Willie Mitchell — doesn’t let his assemblage of veteran R&B players go to waste. While the songs have perhaps sacrificed some of their murky swamp-funk for a slightly glossier sheen, the arrangements are note-perfect, with tasteful and effective swashes of guitar and string intermingling with guttural rhythm and insistent horns.
While the songs perhaps don’t equal the high points of the pair’s greatest work (“Let’s Stay Together,” “Love and Happiness,” “Here I Am,” et cetera), the album’s best tracks could easily take a place on any of Rev. Green’s 1970s albums.
Particularly effective are the aforementioned “I Can’t Stop,” which — if programmers had any brains, scope or sense of history — would fit the rotation on any modern R&B station, “You,” with it’s slightly disco-esque sway and joyously gospel-based structure, and “Not Tonight,” a classic Green lament on which his tortured calls are responded to with gentle tragedy by the back-up vocalists (like the musicians, veterans of working with Green and Mitchell).
Al Green and Willie Mitchell are woefully underrated as songwriters, as their deep and complex chord progressions and orchestrations mark their songs as uniquely distinctive in soul music, or any other music for that matter. On I Can’t Stop, they sound neither rusty nor lazy, despite their lack of recent collaboration.
Instead, they sound like they’re waking up from a long repose, playful and energetic as they re-create magic. The songs possess a timeless quality, in that they don’t really change what Al Green’s music is about; when what he does is this good, though, no reasonable person should care.
Rev. Green has promised that he’ll remain the pastor at the Full Gospel Tabernacle, and any visitor to Memphis should be happy to hear that, as a visit to Rev. Green’s church is a most memorable experience for any who’s lucky enough to witness it. He hasn’t shed any of his gospel intensity on I Can’t Stop, which shouldn’t be surprising, since soul music has always just been secularized gospel anyway.
Instead, one of America’s great voices has re-teamed with his old friends and best partners to add another chapter to the continuing story of a man whose music represents perhaps the strongest bridge between earth and heaven, the utterly carnal and the righteously spiritual. Welcome back, Reverend Green. Don’t stop now.
Grade: A
