Blue Note Records
2003
I Can't Stop
About This Album
Thomas Wolfe may have said you can't go home again, but he was wrong. People go home again all the time. Usually when they do they find that it just isn't the same. When musicians attempt to go back home, it usually turns out to be a pale imitation at best and a disaster at worst. On his 2003 album, I Can't Stop, Al Green attempts to go back home. The album was recorded at the Hi studios with old cohort Willie Mitchell behind the boards and helping write the songs, with members of the Hi session crew providing the music (right down to the same female backup singers). I Can't Stop is certainly no disaster; it is a well-made, funky, fun record that proves two things -- the Hi sound lives and Al Green still has it ("it" being all the things that made him so great in the '70s, things like charisma, style, and that amazing voice). He whoops and hollers his way through I Can't Stop like a man committed, fully alive, and excited by the chance to get old-school funky. That joy translates to the listener; it is hard to stop smiling and bopping along as the album plays. When Green lets loose with his trademark falsetto burst, it's like the last 30 years never happened.
Track List (try tracks 1,4,5 and 6)

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