106. Prayer

D’Angelo & The Vanguard: Black Messiah (RCA, 2014);
composed by Michael Eugene Archer

All of D’Angelo’s studio albums freak me out, but the fact that he has released only three of them in thirty years is the aspect that actually freaks me out the least. Every time I hear this track from the last album he put out after a decade of silence – (reportedly, Prince had written him a letter the entire text of which was “Well?”) – my first reaction is the same: “How did they get the chiming bells in tune?” Maybe no one cares, but tubular bells have so many overtones that they always sound sour to me. No less so than the brief section of actual tubular bells on Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.” Or Chic’s “I Want Your Love.” Not here. The tonality of the sound centers the whole track. Which suggests that D'Angelo did not get the bell in tune with the track; rather, he got the track in tune with the bell, overtones and all. What sounds like the most basic of drum shuffles by Questlove is glued to a murky electronic wash under which D’Angelo prays for his own sanity. Proof of any pudding is in the eating, but that goes double when the pudding eats you.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (on average) until Donald goes away.