CURTIS MAYFIELD — Sweet Exorcist (review)

CURTIS MAYFIELD — Sweet Exorcist album cover

Album · 1974 · RnB

3/5 · 2012-01-20
dreadpirateroberts

By the time Curtis reached 'Sweet Exorcist' he'd already released the monster 'Superfly' one of his obvious peaks, and was ever after climbing back toward those heights. While never reaching them on many levels, at the same time, he remained faithful to his sound and his outlook on life in America.

Fans of his harder funk, with its ferocious middle sections and great horn parts or powerful basslines will not find as much similar ground covered here. Fans of his snappy, 'Superfly' funk will also be looking back just two years to 1972, or earlier. 'Sweet Exorcist' in contrast, presents a lighter funk, musically, reminiscent of The Impressions perhaps, while lyrically, it's classic Curtis.

Despite this, the vocals are mixed lower than usual - at times reducing Curtis to a murmur. Its a real shame, even if not all the vocal melodies are as good as ones he'd written before, it would be nice to hear his lyrics a little clearer. The album does suffer from a few symptoms that plague some of his releases too, where he repeats musical ideas, not only in the general tenor of some pieces here, but right down to the strings in 'Kung-Fu' which echo quite closely those on 'Right on for the Darkness' from his previous album, 'Back to the World.' This isn't to suggest that 'Sweet Exorcist' is a poor album, however. It's not. But for me it doesn't reach the giddy heights of his previous work, even if the title track is flat out one of his best songs, with it's gentle verses, funky chorus and great vocals. Followed by 'To Be Invisible' with its lush strings, it verges on syrupy, and shows how prominent the orchestration had become at this point in Mayfeild's career, as they feature on the bulk of pieces here.

While not every song is as impressive as the title track, 'Kung-Fu' and 'Make me Believe in You' are welcome additions to the list. Particularly the almost sly closer, 'Make me Believe in You' has a funk that is quite subversive because you don't quite release how good it is until after a few spins - with a rawer production, it could have fit on 'Superfly'. Along with a good vocal line and some nice touches from the strings too, which are occasionally plucked for variety, it's pretty close to the best song on the album, though it probably could have been around thirty seconds shorter. 'Kung-Fu' covers similar ground, in a slightly more stripped-down manner, to 'Right on For the Darkness' and according to my liner notes, one of Curtis' "craziest" lyrics (in terms of its forthrightness):

"My mother bore in a ghetto/there was no mattress for my bed/she couldn't call me Jesus, I wasn't white enough she said/and then she named me Kung-Fu/Don't have to explain it."

As ever, Mayfield's liner notes (on the releases I have) provide no line-up information, save for arrangers and producers. This is disappointing because there are some great players in his band, and for the first half of the seventies, it appears to be the same group for the most part, though I'm guessing based on the sound and the feel of the music.

Overall I can't rate this one too high when only three songs really stand out, though if you're already a Curtis fan this is still worthwhile though it's not his best.