Doobie brother Michael McDonald's long-overdue debut solo album confirms his place as the most compelling male pop singer of the past few years. Not since Linda Ronstadt's Heart like a Wheel period has a single voice exerted such a profound influence on the pop mainstream. Like Ronstadt, McDonald compresses several different strains into a style all his own. And where Ronstadt's mixture of folk-pop sweetness, country torch and mariachi singing laid the groundwork for a whole school of Los Angeles-based women singers, McDonald's blend of Ray Charles' crying blues, Motown pop-soul and early Frank Sinatra has influenced white and black singers alike–from Kenny Loggins and Robbie Dupree
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to Luther Vandross and James Ingram.
Like the greatest pop voices, McDonald's has a built-in emotional throb. The thrill of listening to him has less to do with his interpretative abilities than with a deeper emotional-physical empathy. For like Ronstadt or the young Sinatra, McDonald conveys an ardent, almost religious belief in the transcendent power of romantic love. And his mixture of tenderness and passion is so relentless, he can infuse just about any lyric with conviction.
Just as McDonald's singing has inspired many imitators, so has his Latin-inflected, Motown-influenced songwriting. In particular, the syncopated, hooky keyboard sound of "What a Fool Believes" has been run into the ground by Robbie Dupree, the Pointer Sisters, Ambrosia and countless others. But in McDonald's hands, this familiar pop-soul style still has some life left. And on If That's What It Takes, he successfully expands from that base.
"I Can Let Go Now" is a smoldering torch song in which McDonald plays acoustic piano while being backed by a classy string arrangement, and "Losin' End," an early Doobies song, has been gorgeously recast as a smoky, jazz-tinged lament. "I Keep Forgettin'" is a terse Motown-style tune, syncopated into a delicious pop-funk call-and-response featuring Michael and his sister Maureen. "I Gotta Try" (written with Kenny Loggins) is the album's only topical song; it addresses the world's troubled times in a melody that recalls "I Heard It through the Grapevine."
But the theme that pervades the album is Michael McDonald's belief in the attainability and sustain-ability of true love in today's climate of shallow commitments and frenetic pleasure-seeking. "I can't let go, because I believe in it," McDonald insists in the final song on an album filled with guilty hearts, "Dear John" letters and lonely lovers. And the way his voice seizes the thread of emotional truth behind all the soap-opera trappings makes this fool a believer. (RS 379)
STEPHEN HOLDEN
