Lay It Down

iTunes Review

For 2003’s I Can’t Stop and 2005’s Everything’s Okay, Al Green reunited with Willie Mitchell, the Memphis producer who oversaw all of Green’s classic Seventies albums for the Hi label. Now with Lay It Down, hip-hop-generation producers James Poyser and Ahmir Thompson take the reins and end up making Green’s music sounds more like Mitchell than Mitchell himself could. All the ingredients are here: the softly pulsing drums (“Just For Me”); the breathy blend of jazz guitar and B-3 organ (“What More Do You Want From Me”); the form-fitting string arrangements (“All I Need”). It’s not as if Poyser and Thompson alter Green’s sound; they simply leave out all the unnecessary ingredients and make sure that the remaining elements are rendered with warmth and poise. When Anthony Hamilton and John Legend show up, it doesn’t feel like a passing of the torch as much as a shared recognition of a certain set of musical values. Most welcome is the appearance of Corinne Bailey Rae, who carries an air of everywoman elegance that hearkens back to great Hi singers like Jean Plum and Ann Peebles. Lay It Down gets us closer to the heart of Green’s art than we have been since 1977’s Belle.