Robert Palmer's career and third album reflect the latter's title. With a seasoned group of L.A. session players supplementing his band and Steve Smith's slick production, he moves from rock to reggae-funk with professional agility. And yet while Palmer is undeniably a tasteful interpreter in the blue-eyed soul school, his music too often lacks the vision, and his voice the individuality, to transcend his influences. The result is a record that is coolly professional but with little character or passion.
Palmer hits all the right notes and slurs, but his voice is thin; he lacks both the bell-like clarity of Boz Scaggs and the deep-throated growls of Lowell George, his two primary models.
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Consequently, the weight falls on the songs themselves, and most of the material has more the feel of studio exercises than legitimate interpretations.
Palmer is best on silken-smooth soul, and Bill Payne and Fran Tate's "One Last Look" is the album's standout, with a sure lead vocal and a backup that alternately recalls Steely Dan and Little Feat. "Keep in Touch" is a bit funkier but travels on a similar lightly rocking plane. Palmer's best original is the title tune, a funk machine that showcases the band's rhythmic proclivities.
"Gotta Get a Grip on You (Pt. II)" is a well-arranged rhythm track of little distinction, and "Have Mercy" a syncopated butchering of Don Covay's R&B chestnut. The reggae-influenced "Hard Head" and "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" make the moves but never threaten to be more than strident reflections of the real ganja. This problem is most apparent on the by-now-inevitable Little Feat interpretation—"Spanish Moon" this time—that mimics the song with little pretense of recasting or transcending the smoky original.
Palmer understands his influences and manipulates them with skill, but he lacks the individual persona or vision to expand on them to create something his own. Until he does, he will continue to make slickly professional records that, despite strong moments and consistent instrumental savvy, will forever be middleweights. (RS 227)
JOHN MILWARD
Another 1970s Palmer release, another album cover depicting our golden-throated vocalist leading the kind of charmed romantic life the rest of humanity experiences only through pop music and movies. Palmer is still backed by Little Feat and funkiness abounds although some of the early passion is lacking. Contradictorily, the studio-bound "One Last Look" is the standout.
