Andre Williams' most recent outing with
The Sadies, Night & Day, is largely a table-clearing bellow. The
press release indicates that Williams was pretty much
ripped-to-the-tits recording the first portion of the album. When
this bender began is open to speculation, but its conclusion
unequivocally took place the day he was incarcerated. He returned
to the studio a few years later, clean and sober and ready to finish.
There is certainly some buoyancy in the
latter tracks that was nowhere to be found on the earlier ones. But
if the uninitiated listener steers clear of the liner notes, it's
anybody's guess where the turning point between belligerent rummy and
wised-up 12-stepper actually takes place.
Nor does it matter. Williams is about
getting the feeling right, and the words are guttural cyphers
suggesting a reptilian menace lurking just beneath the placid
surface of the swamp, while the glory we amphibians occasionally
reach for does little more than shine a refracted light over the
whole scene.
Williams stint as an early R&B man
is storied. He seems to have been one of those original viewers of
Superfly who rolled his eyes at what he saw, then stomped over to the
record studio to lay down exactly what was what. That was a good deal
more than what audiences in the 60s and 70s were asking for, but
Williams survived long enough for things to come around his way. The
ears of both the young and the old have grown weary of artists being
pretenders to the pantheon.
Of course the flip side of bitter
survival is wonderment, which Williams also gives expression to,
albeit with the accompanying shadow of self-awareness. “I thank
God, and a Higher Power, that I lived to see this hour,” is a
pleasant sort of leaven — until it tilts deliciously back to toxic
fermentation, as Williams concludes with a shrug: “I could shoot a
man in five minutes.”
The Sadies and a wide assortment of R&B
stalwarts take over the studio to give Williams the trippy boost his
battered vocal chords and psyche need to carry the message.
The YouTube samples don't have quite the same mix as what you'll hear
over your speakers in the car, but go ahead and give 'em a click.
Just take my word for it: the final mix was dragged through an alley
full of trash, making Night & Day this year's roll-up-the-windows soundtrack.
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