The O'Jays - The Last Word, album review

Oh-Oh

You can’t call music on The O’Jays’ latest old-school because it is quite simply their-school, Philadelphia-school, and welcome for this.

Their first release for fifteen years, and as the title signals, it is going to be their last: a swan-song gliding gracefully along familiar currents and habitat.

And its soul-conscience – by this I mean hope for a universal love and peace through the exhortations of music – is as softly and sweetly romanticised as ever, simply taking in the here and now with those same beliefs in the power of any Love,

Even if the sky begins to fall
And even if they try to build that wall
And even if the bombs go off
And the world is set on fire, oh

I got your back, I will be near
My love will last, I'll be right here
I got you, I got you
I got your back, I will be near
My love will last, I'll be right here
I got you, I got you

[‘I Got You’]

A Marvin Gaye-esque funk on Above the Law does pump up some emotive anger too, and there is no questioning the sincerity and purpose of these offerings.

The nearest perhaps they and we will ever get to that Shangri-La is through its soul-nostalgia, reminding for those old enough to recall those falsetto peaks and doo-wop bass lines and harmonious days of melody and optimism,

Love is a revolution
It twists and it turns
It burns but it heals
When it steals it returns
Join in the rebellion
Is this how we save the world, oh-oh

As for ’68 Summer Nights I am delighted to revel in its gorgeous, upbeat remembering.