CANDI STATON: NIGHTLITES (1982)
1) Love And Be Free; 2)
Suspicious Minds; 3) In The Still Of The Night; 4) The Sunshine Of Your Love;
5) Hurry Sundown; 6) Tender Hooks; 7) Count On Me.
I am unaware of the details, but seeing the
name of Dave Crawford, once again, as producer and occasional songwriter for
this record, obviously suggests that he may have been brought back in one last,
desperate attempt to revive Staton's career — maybe bless her with another ʽYoung
Hearts Run Freeʼ or something like that. Unfortunately, it was too late, and
not even a return to seductive sleeve photos could help. For sure, the return
of Crawford means a slightly more subtle and inventive touch in the production
department, but this time, he seems to have too many other things on his mind,
and there are no particularly outstanding grooves or unusual approaches to
instrumentation — in other words, nothing even close to the quality of
ʽVictimʼ.
For one thing, the entire album stays way too
bogged down in the already discredited disco idiom: the nadir is a
straightforward disco arrangement of ʽSuspicious Mindsʼ, a song that I have
never been a huge fan of, but in the light of this travesty, I will probably
have to thoroughly re-evaluate the Elvis performance — the song is totally
deconstructed here, stripped of its orchestral flourishes and reducing its
formerly complex gospel-pop backing vocals to a much more simple (and poorly
recorded) female choir, and Candi Staton is no Elvis anyway. When released as a
single, the song totally flopped in the US (amazingly, it seems to have charted
at No. 31 in the UK), faring even worse than the first single, the uplifting
funk-pop anthem ʽCount On Meʼ.
Crawford's two songs are nothing particularly
special either: ʽIn The Still Of The Nightʼ has a thick, growling groove
provided by bassist Doug Whimbish (best part of the song is his mini-solo in
the middle), but little else in its favor, and ʽThe Sunshine Of Your Loveʼ
(nothing to do with the Cream song — see, they even put the definite article
there to mark the difference) has
nothing in its favor at all, other than, if you think about it long enough, you
might appreciate the smartness of putting a «nighttime» and a «daytime» disco
tune back-to-back (hint: the «daytime» song sucks with far more verve).
A few of the choruses have the
catchy-through-repetition effect (ʽTender Hooksʼ), but the only song on the
entire album that got me interested in its overall sound was the album opener
ʽLove And Be Freeʼ, with its tricky mesh of effect-laden guitars and
electronics — seems like Crawford had a lot of fun producing that one track,
but then, apparently, he just lost interest in the rest of the album, so,
despite a tiny increase in quality from Chance
and Candi Staton, I still have no
choice but to give it another thumbs down.
And that was the end of the line for Candi:
after the record bombed once again, she decided that she'd had enough, and with
her next album, Make Me An Instrument,
declared (in the very first song) that ʽSin Doesn't Live Here Anymoreʼ,
switching to a nothing-but-gospel career in the same fashion that Al Green did
several years before — and spending the next twenty-plus years loyally and
faithfully putting out a new gospel album every one or two years. I have no
interest writing about any of these — reviewing a string of gospel albums by a
B-level performer is way too much even for the standards of Only Solitaire
completionism — but I've heard a few of those songs, and at least she sounded
more comfortable singing them than she did trying to find life in all that
generic disco crap, so more power to her.
In my book a happy ending. Btw Doug Wimbish played with Living Colour in the 90s.
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