Don Ignacio's Music Reviews

We Got By 1975 ★★★

Al Jarreau is one cool cat, and this is one cool album—beatnik soul polished up for the mid-1970s without losing the flavor of cigarette smoke. Quite a bit rawer than the sleek yacht-pop sound he’d later become associated with, but he’s also hardly charging through the wall. Scooped out of the same cloud as Steely Dan, though not nearly as cryptic or musically aloof. Jarreau wants groove more than mystery. And the grooves are good. Punchy and varied. Tidy production, too, with sharp horns, neat springy rhythms, and electric piano giving the whole thing a little after-hours polish. You also get those small female backing-vocal accents popping in behind him. You mostly show up for the voice, though. His vocal acrobatics stretch notes just right, skip around the beat, and turn a melody into something bendy and half-improvised. “Raggedy Ann” has a nice funky bounce. “Sweet Potato Pie” is toe-tapping, polished and warm. “You Don’t See Me” begins almost like a proto-Bobby McFerrin a cappella bit before the bass guitar sneaks in under it. Not as cute as McFerrin, but many of us might consider that a boon. All around, good mature pop-soul. Even if that style generally annoys you, maybe you’ll like it. Take that as an endorsement. Jarreau’s range stays impressive throughout. Easy high notes, little conversational swerves, phrasing that morphs around the groove. Always something interesting to catch your ear. “Aladdin’s Lamp” closes things out. A lovely gospel-tinged piano ballad that gets into an ethereal realm without turning goopy. A remarkably tasteful album. Solid all the way. No especially large highs, but a pleasure to sit with.

Glow 1976 ★★½

The question is whether we really need Al Jarreau adding all those ba-bib-boops in the middle of “Your Song.” Well, sure. At that point you might as well let him. The man is going to vocal-acrobat all over that sucker whether Elton John likes it or not. Glow is a less distinctive album than We Got By, which had more idiosyncratic bite to it, but it’s still slick, warm, and professionally pleasant. Sweeter too. Stickier. Like somebody poured jazz-soul over a stack of pancakes. “Rainbow in Your Eyes” is an enjoyable opener. Easy to tap your foot to, and he’s already talking about sailing the seven seas. So that didn’t take long. Give the man his beige cardigan and captain’s hat. The yacht is idling at the dock, the ice bucket sweating. The closer, “Glow,” ventures further into smooth-pop waters with those glossy strings and watery keyboards. A few songs, like “Milwaukee” and “Somebody’s Watching You,” slide into more standard jazzy territory, and that’s where my brain starts going on walkabout. Nothing embarrassing. Nothing painful. Just the sort of tasteful competence that slowly turns into background air. Jarreau remains a terrific singer, of course. He can do things with a phrase that most singers shouldn’t even attempt without parental supervision. Smooth and nice. Inspired? Not really thinking so.

Look to the Rainbow 1977 ★★★★

Live Album

Al Jarreau came up in jazz clubs, and this sounds like it. You can practically smell the smoke in the jacket. The record has bounce all over it. Too much, maybe, but that’s the fun. He walks onstage and immediately starts making noises like half the rhythm section got trapped in his throat. Boop-boos, pops, little rubber-band sounds flying around the room. Studio Jarreau is impressive. Live Jarreau sounds like somebody handed a microphone to a jazz imp that somehow got loose in the world. This may be the best way to hear him, unless you came aboard later for the yacht-soul cruise. “Take Five” is the one to play first. Paul Desmond’s old Brubeck Quartet number gets put in front of Jarreau, and he immediately starts climbing around inside it. He’s barely singing at first. It’s more like he’s emptying a junk drawer of rhythm noises into the microphone, and after a while you stop passively listening and start staring at the speakers, trying to figure out how the man is doing it. The title track is long, soft, and apparently beloved by every magazine writer who ever held a jazz poll. I like “Could You Believe” better in that lane—a warm soul number with soft electric piano and actual room to breathe. “Burst in with the Dawn” picks up a lite-funk groove, and Jarreau’s scat singing starts reaching machine-gun speed. It’s a lot of fun. Jarreau won a Grammy for jazz vocals for this album, and I don’t even have to look at the competition to conclude that he probably deserved it. This is the closest thing we get to quintessential Jarreau—before the yacht reached the dock.

All Fly Home 1978 ★★

The yacht hasn’t left the harbor yet, but somebody has checked the weather, packed the linen pants, and given the electric piano a fresh polish. All Fly Home wants to stretch beyond the usual late-’70s electric-piano lounge. You get funk touches, jazz touches, some soul-pop, some grownup gloss, but it stays pretty restrained. Jarreau co-wrote most of it, but the songs still feel a little remote coming through the speakers. Jarreau remains an extraordinary singer. “Thinkin’ About It Too” opens with some light funk, sweet and neatly behaved. “I’m Home” slows things down with electric piano and a soul performance Jarreau nearly carries by voice alone. “All” is a fairly blank soul-pop song, but Jarreau stretches out a long held note in the middle for a little show-offey moment. “Fly” gives him more room to operate—the scat singing returns and the vocal acrobatics come with it. The other standout is a jazzy seven-minute cover of The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home”—light and soft, with long notes while the piano tinkles around and the drummer busies himself with complicated little rhythms. A well-made album and certainly no one is being lazy. Still, after it’s over, what I remember most is the smoothness. Vanilla pudding, basically. Easy going down—not much reason to keep thinking about it after the bowl is empty.

This Time 1980 ★★½

Al Jarreau had been headed toward smoother waters for several albums by now, but this is where producer Jay Graydon entered the picture and made it official. That’s right, folks—the deck is polished, copious amounts of suntan oil applied, and the captain’s hat is on and just a little crooked for style. We are now finally in yacht-rock territory. Graydon takes this jazz vocalist in the rough—who at one point threatened to be cool—and buffs him into something softer, glossier, and more processed. The album shines like a glassy Caribbean ocean. Gentle pianos. Twinkling electric keys. The R&B rhythms run smooth as machinery, and Jarreau’s voice floats over the top like a soft trumpet. Little jazzy noodles appear now and then, nimble and tasteful. Nothing to distract you from the central groove. And of course everything careful not to splash the main attraction. While this kind of music isn’t necessarily about hooks, hooks still help—and this album just doesn’t produce many potent ones. The album’s centerpiece is “Spain (I Can Recall),” which finds a few small grooves, keeps itself moving, and then sends Jarreau off on an extended scat detour. Other songs like “Light Up” and “Your Sweet Love” have that smooth-as-silk instrumentation that gives me flashbacks from waiting for tech support, but the melodies just don’t give the songs that needed push to make them immortal. The album as a whole is certainly more focused than All Fly Home, and it’s not terrible by any means. I just wish these waters were a little more colorful.