After the decreasingly inspired string of retro-soul hits and the increasingly depressing string of headlines trumpeting new lows for Amy Winehouse, its chief (and really its only) star, the trend seems to be sputtering out in fourth-quarter 2008, with Adele already a footnote on U.S. shores. It's actually refreshing, then, to hear a record like Raphael Saadiq's unabashedly retro The Way I See It, which doesn't try to "update" old soul sounds to a hip-hop world and a white singer. Instead, the former Tony! Toni! Toné! frontman works under the simple belief that those styles created in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Memphis during the 1960s speak as loudly now as they did then. They don't need to be revived, resurrected, retrofitted, or revitalized. They just need to be played.
So Saadiq, an artist whose career has failed to match his considerable talents, self-produces The Way I See It to sound out of time. Playing almost all the instruments, he keeps the drums taut, the basslines rubbery, and makes sure the tambourine remains a vital component of the rhythm section. His tightly wound guitar on "Staying in Love" even recalls his early New Jack Swing riffs (see: "If I Had No Loot"). The album starts rockily, however, with "Sure Hope You Mean It", a clever rewrite of "How Sweet It Is" that suffers from a bad mix. Against Saadiq's exuberant delivery (he's a superlatively smooth vocalist), the percussion sounds slightly off-beat: The tambourine shakes before hitting on the beat, creating an audio illusion of being too fast, while the snare rolls into the verses sound too slow, like they've been manipulated from a faster performance. As a result, the song sound like it's forever winding down, then struggling to correct itself. It's a curious opener, technically flawed but conceptually solid right down to the distant yoo-hoo's.
Fortunately, "100 Yard Dash" rights things quickly, sounding appropriately dashed off. Sex and social issues commingle on The Way I See It, with playfully physical songs like "Dash", "Just One Kiss", and "Let's Take a Walk" (sample lyric: "Love can happen anywhere") alongside fare like "Keep Marchin'" and "Big Easy". The latter, obviously, is about Katrina and features the Rebirth Brass Band, yet Saadiq makes no larger point than WTF, capping an uptempo chorus with a massive question mark: "Someone please tell me what's going on," he sings, echoing Marvin Gaye but sounding right this very moment as the horns blare around him. It's immensely affecting without hitting you over the head.
Afterwards, he road-trips to Philly for the lushly orchestrated "Just One Kiss" (with Joss Stone kept in check) and "Oh Girl", which cuts a big slice out of the Stylistics' "Betcha By Golly Wow". The cloud cushion of strings and slow-moving sitar-sounding riff come across as overly curatorial, but the bonus version of the song sounds much better for sounding so modern, thanks to Jay-Z's pointed rhythms and verbal shadow-boxing. I can't tell you a thing about what Jay-Z raps about, and he probably left the studio before the second verse, but he opens up the song quite a bit, making it less dependent on its source material. Still, few artists live so vitally in the past as Saadiq.
