Search - Sly & Family Stone :: Life (Exp)

Back on the right track.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 05/15/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"After the record-label driven "Dance to the Music", Sly & the Family Stone, no doubt given significant leverage with the help of a hit single, produced a stream of fantastic albums beginning with 1968's "Life". In some ways like "Dance to the Music", "Life" streamlines the band's sound a bit, but unlike "Dance to the Music", it accomplishes this by taking everything into a mid-tempo, guitar-driven funk stew.



This creates a significant diversity of sound-- fierce distorted guitars ("Dynamite!"), "Eleanor Rigby" ("Plastic Jim"), fuzz guitars and rotated vocals ("Into My Own Thing"), bizarre psychedelid funk ("I'm An Animal") and even "Dance to the Music" pop/funk ("Love City", "M'Lady") all find their way in. Most of it ends up as mid-tempo funk, but it's all really, really good, the only exception being the goofy closer "Jane is a Groupee".



This reissue remasters the record,a ppends a handful of bonus tracks, and includes a detailed liner note essay discussing the album. Like the other remasters, "Life" benefits immensely from the improved sound and really gets new life breathed into it.



My assessment of "Life" is somewhat tempered by knowledge of what the band would be doing in the future-- while it's a superb record, it pales in comparison to its successors. Both "Stand!" and "There's a Riot Goin' On" are among the finest albums of their era. Nonetheless, there's more than enough great material on "Life" to make it worth the investment. Recommended."

DYNAMITE!!!!!

Andre S. Grindle | Brewer Maine | 04/17/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Be warned when you put on "Life" you are inviting yourself into a world of rhythmic overload!As the transitional album between Dance to the Music and Stand! this album is filled with a lot of sestained musical dymanics and heavy group activity.The tempo is pretty continually sustained from "Dynamite" through "Into My Own Thing".The hits (the title track and "M'Lady") have the same festive carnaval funk style of "Dance To The Music",although the focus on this recording is much more on the groove,not songcraft so much."Jane Is A Groupee" lives more on the psychedelic shore.The bonus cuts here don't reveal much more then the album does.The major players here?Jerry Martini and Cynthia Robinson are miked up especially high and really punch through."Life" is right about where soul met funk at the crossroads of music and really laid down the groundwork for the upcoming funk onslaught that was Stand!.As the liner notes state 'Life' is often neglected not only because of it's place in Sly's catalog but because it has no big standout hit songs,the exact same problem that befell A Whole New Thing,the band's debut.But you can sing along to everything here,dance to it and even if it's not very carefully constructed it has a lot of wonderful things to say lyrically as well.So as is true with any definition of the word 'Life' is worth all the time you put into it."

(3.5 stars) Lighthearted fun but far from their best

finulanu | Here, there, and everywhere | 11/17/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'd be the first to admit that Life is a difficult record to rate. On the one hand, there isn't a single brilliant song here: the crackling funk-rocker "Dynamite!" and the party anthem "Fun" come close, but both barely miss the boat. So it's tempting to dole out a 3. On the other hand, there is not a single bad song on Life: even "Plastic Jim", which combines elements from Zappa's "Plastic People" and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" has a good guitar riff; even repeatathons like "I'm an Animal" and "Into My Own Thing" have solid melodies; even idiotic novelties like "Chicken" and "Janie is a Groupie" are actually pretty durned funny. Okay, so maybe the "Dance to the Music"-like "Love City" is rather stale, but it's adequate. So this is more of a 3.25 than a 3.5, I suppose. The truth is this is one fun record, probably why I gave it the benefit of the doubt: it's got a sense of humor most the later releases were missing; the positive message songs (title track; "Harmony") are uplifting; the shared vocals are usually satisfying ("M'Lady"), and there's a rock element here that most other releases don't have, which makes it quite an original album in the Sly canon."