LP Review: Small Talk
Previous LP: Fresh (A)
Next LP: High On You (C)
Released: 1974
LP Charts: #15 pop
Let’s cut to the chase on Small Talk.
The first half of this album is fairly good. Not nearly as good as the band’s preceding three albums, but it’s praiseworthy. The second half of the album is a mess.
There’s a recycling, yet again, of the bass line from “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” on the title track, which has a baby cooing and crying a couple years before Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. Stevie has Sly beat on the lyrics (Sly just says over and over how he likes his baby’s “small talk”), but when making a song about your newborn child, maybe lyrics aren’t the point?
“Say You Will” continues generally following the formula laid down by There’s A Riot Goin’ and Fresh, but the big innovation was incorporating a fiddle. It’s an interesting wrinkle, but a sign that Sly was really just resting on laurels if simply adding a fiddle was the big musical reveal.
“Mother Beautiful” is stately and wonderfully sentimental but far too short at just 2:01. Equal in goodness is “Time for Livin’” (#10 R&B, #32 pop), which would be the band’s final top 40 pop hit. The song is ultimately about change and seems ambivalent about the whole experience of living cuz the first verse is positive…
Time for livin', time for givin'
No time for makin' up a monster to share
Time for livin', time for givin'
No time for breakin' our own fairytale
While the third is downtrodden…
Time for changin', re-arrangin'
No time for peace, just pass the buck
Rearrangin', leader's changin'
Pretty soon he might not give a damn
“Can’t Strain My Brain” has a gloopy groove that seems inspirational for D’Angelo’s neo-soul Brown Sugar some 20 years later.
“Loose Booty” is the only real shot of adrenaline on this album as it updates the “Dance to the Music” ethos to the sludgy funk of Sly’s current coke addled brain. Unfortunately, the vocals are nowhere near as peppy as they used to be and have a hard time rising above the muddled music. Furthermore, whatever energy the song had at its outset is well worn out by the 2:30 mark where it should have ended. Instead it keeps up the forced feel-good time another 60 seconds.
A rather prophetic moment because thus far the album has been a good, if not revelatory, experience. However, it falls down the fucking stairs.
“Holdin’ On”, “Wishful Thinkin’”, “Better Thee Than Me”, and “Livin’ While I’m Livin’” is the most listless stretch of music I’ve ever heard from Sly & the Family Stone. The ideas within each of those songs aren’t bad, just poorly and lazily executed. The phrase “mailing it in” comes to mind.
The album ends on the harmless doo wop tune, “This Is Love”.
ALBUM GRADE: C+
After having released three consecutive albums in the A range, I didn’t expect Sly & the Family Stone to keep up that level of output, but holy shit was this a big regression. Still, it ain’t bad. Just a bit of a mess.
Song Scores
Small Talk: 6.5/10
Say You Will: 6.5/10
Mother Beautiful: 7.5/10
Time for Livin’: 7.5/10
Can’t Strain My Brain: 6.5/10
Loose Booty: 6/10
Holdin’ On: 5/10
Wishful Thinkin’: 4/10
Better Thee Than Me: 5/10
Livin’ While I’m Livin’: 3/10
This Is Love: 6/10
Previous LP: Fresh (A)
Next LP: High On You (C)