Al Green – Everything’s OK

You lookers in the faces of gift horses will find reasons not to wholeheartedly embrace the second secular coming of Al Green. You’ll squirm when that falsetto strains to hit its mark, elsewhere think unspecial thoughts about his thickened cords, and too easily dismiss his cover of the gloppy “You Are So Beautiful” as you did not dismiss his classic cover of the gloppy “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart”. But if that’s your reaction to Everything’s OK, Green’s second recent re-teaming with Willie Mitchell, his producer from glory days gone by, you’re probably the type who wrote off Sinatra post- “Very Good Year”, or even thought “Lady In Cement” was a more apt title for Billie Holiday’s “Lady In Satin”.

Like all the immortals, the Reverend Al — as he bills himself for the first time on record — has a way of converting whatever he has lost to the aging process into interpretive gains. To listen to “Real Love” is not to hear the rougher edges, but to feel pinned back by the intensity and devastating drive of his testifying. Is it too simplistic to say Green, navigating from growls to shrieks to mirthful laughs, sounds more at ease with himself than ever, and that this ease translates into a newfound power?

I’ll cop to thinking the material on Everything’s OK could be more consistently above-average, and to wishing that more tunes jumped out as potential hits. But even his best albums had their share of filler, and having the pop era’s greatest vocalist back in our clutches (and Mitchell’s), pouring himself into songs about boy-girl love and other pre-heavenly magic — what finer elixir could you wish for?

Mitchell’s settings have Green’s DNA ingrained in them. Without a shred of self-consciousness, the producer draws upon timeless ’70s soul and funk touches, priming the popping horns on tunes such as “Be My Baby” with a streamlined efficiency worthy of Count Basie, and bringing the strings and backing vocals and shuffle beat on the title track to a fine Memphis boil.

Serving his maker, post-Belle Album, Green came across with some fine records. But when he targets his congregation, as he does here, that’s when he draws the loudest and most fervent calls of “Mercy!”