If All I Was Was Black

If All I Was Was Black is often times both troubling and soothing.

Potent stuff. [Jan 2018, p.114]

Musically it’s a fascinating, low-key meld of 70s funk, gospel choruses and wonky rock guitar. Build a Bridge swells with Prince-like melody, No Time for Crying is stark and serious, and Peaceful Dream a gospel singalong. Inspirational work.

The lyrics sometimes reflect Tweedy's usual tropes as a writer, but Staples gives them a musical and emotional force that sets them apart. Her voice is in splendid shape for a septuagenarian, still supple and able to navigate the twists of the melodies while sailing confidently over the arrangements that fuse indie rock with the feel of '70s soul. ... Quite simply, this is an album America needs.

If All I Was Was Black contains performances as powerful as any she has given.

That the songs on the record, which largely deals with race and oppression, were written by a white man [Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy] could have undercut the emotional heft. But Staples has had decades of practice delivering truths as part of the Staple Sisters--who were celebrated for their gospel “message songs”--and her performance here is so utterly convincing it feels like a moot point.

There are echoes of Pops Staples’s gentle, miasmic guitar in the folksy gospel stylings of “Peaceful Dream” and the cyclical twang carrying the Black Lives Matter anthem “Little Bit”, warning youngsters to be careful around cops; but elsewhere the influence of Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On is paramount.

One of the great successes of If All I Was is that it has the same levity as the anthems of the civil rights era.

An album that opens full of tension, riot and discord--before the acoustic gospel of Peaceful Dream leads into strong pleas for universal love and understand and quests for personal redemption. [Dec 2017, p.94]

Where Mavis' voice once a rangey, optimistic mezzo-soprano, her register has dropped dramatically to an emotionally rich, brassy contralto. It adds a growling intensity to lyrics that are dignified rather than angry. [Dec 2017, p.24]

Staples is in strong voice throughout, yet on All Over Again, the closing folk blues look back on a lfe lived without regrets, she sings even lower than usual, sounding her age--impossibly wise and dignified. A fitting end to a great record.

A singer of remarkable power and expression, Staples essentially rewrites these songs simply by singing them, imbuing each line with fine gradients of emotion and authority. She emerges as the active agent in the project, delivering these songs from her perspective as a black woman, as an artist, as a daughter and sister, even as a Christian.

If All I Was Was Black is suffused with contemporary political resonance, married to Staples’ timelessly transcendent gospel-meets-bluesy-folk. That push-pull between sorrowful analysis of the current state of the country and hope for the future is its defining quality, and it works--mostly.

The result is an object lesson in collaborative activism, with Staples tilting away from Sixties R&B formalism but doubling down on topicality.

Of course, things were even more dire during the civil rights movement, and like the music that the Staple Singers produced during that era, If All I Was Was Black is hopeful and optimistic not in ignorance of political reality, but in spite of it.

If All I Was Was Black is another late-career winner from Staples, an album that perfectly captures her gentle, loving and elegant way of making a political statement without sacrificing the passion she's built her career upon.