BOBBY WOMACK: THE POET II (1984)
1) Love Has Finally Come At
Last; 2) It Takes A Lot Of Strength To Say Goodbye; 3) Through The Eyes Of A
Child; 4) Surprise, Surprise; 5) Tryin' To Get Over You; 6) Tell Me Why; 7)
Who's Foolin' Who; 8) I Wish I Had Someone To Go Home To; 9) American Dream.
Playing the «sequel game» is always a risky
business, and if you are doing it in the hedonistic / technocrazy 1980s, and if
you have already shown declining immunity to musical crap-a-titis in the disco
era, winning chances are slim. It all begins, as usual, with the album cover:
same Bobby, same guitar, but the way he is dressed and the way he is wielding
it shows that the fashionable Bobby is out, and Bobby «The Ladies' Man» Womack
is in. Of course, the man was never a stranger to direct sexual attraction, but
this presentation is a tad too
obvious.
So it comes as no big surprise that the first
three songs are rather shapeless, and emotionally similar, R&B ballads on
which Bobby engages Patti LaBelle in a series of soulful duets, every one of
which, sooner or later, turns into a screaming match — which Bobby inevitably
loses, because trying to outscream Patti LaBelle is a futile enterprise for any
man. The songs are extremely bland and generic, though, just the regular
anthemic, overproduced crapola of the times, and not even Bobby's guitar licks,
moving closer and closer to regular jazz patterns, can redeem the lack of
memorable melodies or the empty keyboard sound. Besides that, Patti LaBelle's
singing style is also an acquired taste (most of the time, the lady operates in
overdrive mode, and that can wear a listener out pretty quickly).
It gets a little better from there on in the
songwriting department, but not in the production area. ʽSurprise, Surpriseʼ is
written in late period Stevie Wonder's style (soft, steady dance rhythms,
gently rocking synths, catchy chorus, etc.) and has a touch of genuine
tenderness to it (percussion is really dreadful though). ʽWho's Foolin' Whoʼ is
actually a potentially great electrofunk groove, but also spoiled with excesses
(silly backing harmonies and way too
many synth overdubs — why didn't they just leave it all to Bobby and the bass
guitar?). And probably the best two
songs are left for last: ʽI Wish I Had Someone To Go Home Toʼ finally gives us
a pinch of classic Bobby Womack desperation, featuring his best (most
credible, at least) vocals on the entire record, in addition to some surprising
tone and mood changes from verse to bridge — and ʽAmerican Dreamʼ, hinting at
the latter's unreachability, is a fairly grand social statement to conclude
such a lightweight album, but at least it's a curious conclusion (even
incorporating a bit of Martin Luther King for extra heaviness). «Probably» the
best, because, like everything else, these songs, too, suffer from dated
production ideas.
Despite a few bright spots, the album as a
whole still gets a thumbs down. It did manage to sell relatively
well, carried on by memories of The Poet,
but, nevertheless, failed to match the sales and chart success of its
predecessor, and initiated the beginning of Bobby's final (as we all thought
until recently) slide into total obscurity and oblivion. The LaBelle duets that
were released as singles never matched the success of ʽIf You Think You're
Lonely Nowʼ, either. And yet, at the same time, The Poet II is clearly way more commercially-oriented than The Poet, a much more clearly
calculated / manipulative affair that should have duped the public, but did
not, maybe because of the presence of so many fresh new stars in the early
1980s who actually had interesting new things to say — Bobby, on the other
hand, was pretty much spent with that one last gasp, no matter how much his
cheerful poise on the album cover, with so many inches of his guitar sticking
out your way, try to insinuate the opposite.
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