Search - Earth Wind & Fire :: In the Name of Love

Of the dozen musicians who made up Earth, Wind & Fire and its horn section during the funk band's glory days in the '70s, only four appear on their 1997 album, In the Name of Love. On hand, however, are the three crucial figures--lead singers Philip Bailey and Maurice White, and bassist Verdine White. Bailey and/or the White brothers cowrote eight of the songs, and Maurice produced the whole project. Moreover, the band has largely forsaken its ill-fated late-'80s attempts to update its sound with new-jack moves and has returned to its classic horn-driven funk grooves of the '70s. The result is the best EW&F release in 16 years. With one harmless exception, the band avoids the sort of political sloganeering and vague spiritualism that made its lyrics so embarrassing in the past, and sticks to the proven themes of dancing and romancing. But what really makes the album so appealing are the juicy chorus melodies that the lead singers and their collaborators have come up with. These refrains are so catchy that you want to sing along, and they're so firmly anchored to the syncopated grooves that you'll want to dance along as well. Most of those beats are built atop programmed drum tracks, but live drummers add secondary patterns that give the arrangements the cross-rhythms this group was once famous for. On uptempo numbers such as "Keep It Real" and the title track, Maurice White's lead vocals engage the horns in a heady call-and-response dialogue. On the slower romantic ballads, such as "When Love Goes Wrong" and "Cruising," Bailey's impossibly high tenor sounds as if it's in a permanent swoon. If there were still a market for this sort of old-school funk, these songs would all become hits. --Geoffrey Himes