[Closed] Best of 1974 1Q: Sweet Exorcist vs. On the Beach

[Listmeister]

Curtis Mayfield is one of the first names you think of when you think about 1970's soul. You've got Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and then Curtis Mayfield. Then you start thinking about other people. From 1974, here's Curtis Mayfield's Sweet Exorcist.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Sweet Exorcist by Curtis Mayfield, nominated by Skinny

Recently I tried to do a list of Best Albums by Crosby Stills Nash and/or Young for the ongoing series "From the BEA Book of Lists". I soon abandoned this project, for the simple reason, that all but one of the top 15 were Neil Young albums, which makes a dull list.

Here's his 1974 offering, On the Beach.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

On The Beach by Neil Young, nominated by BEA.

[NickVolos]

Sweet Exorcist is good but On the Beach is beyond...good. Exceptional.
_________________
"And can’t you see you’re in on it?
You were born though you need not
And is that not some cause
For worship, being born among these trees?"

[Listmeister]

I was getting stares from other people in my office because I was unconsciously tapping my feet to the Curtis Mayfield album. I don't usually do that.

On the other hand, even though this is the most enjoyable Neil Young album that I've heard (to be fair, I've only heard a few of his earlier ones), his voice still annoys me.

Vote to Señor Superfly.

[Skinny]

Well, here's where the second of my nominations bites the dust (and I'm not holding out a lot of hope for the Weather Report either at this stage, though to be honest I'm rather more disappointed at the lukewarm reception to Pick a Dub, which I think is work of almost unparalleled genius, but it's whatever whatever). This is probably like Curtis' sixth or seventh best solo album (after Curtis, Curtis/Live!, Roots, Superfly, There's No Place Like America Today, possibly even Back To The World and Short Eyes), and is even further down the list if we start including Impressions albums (this isn't standing up to their debut or This Is My Country or The Young Mods' Forgotten Story), so I won't be surprised when one of Neil Young's finest moments wins this one by a landslide, but I figure I should say a few words on my nomination, as it is still a really dope album by one of the greatest artists to ever grace the enormous platform that is popular music. By now we get the idea - effortlessly sweet love songs, all twinkling chords and sweeping strings, next to urgent political numbers, all gutbusting wah-wah guitar and heart-attack-inducing percussion - but on this album Curtis changes up the formula, and we find love songs that sound like 'If There's A Hell Below' placed alongside socially conscious numbers that recall 'The Makings of You'. Curtis was basically just really fucking awesome at those two things, and his best albums find a perfect balance of the two, but the switching up of the messages and styles here is a pleasant surprise, and makes this album stand out if for no reason other than that. This album is also probably a little less polished than some of his better known releases (check the muffled organ that occasionally chimes in during 'To Be Invisible', or the tossed-off - in a good way - nature of 'Power To The People', which is incidentally probably the most Curtis Mayfield song title of all-time, or the verging on dirty funk of 'Kung Fu'), and that works both for and against this album. In one sense, it's nice to hear him sound so at ease (even if it doesn't quite have the same 'recorded in the living room' charm of the Short Eyes soundtrack), but in another sense it gives the impression that he's never really extending himself here. But, in the same way you can't really go wrong with any 1970s Fela Kuti album, any Curtis Mayfield album from this era is always going to be pretty fucking outstanding. 'Suffer' is one of my favourite Mayfield ballads, just a beautiful tale of unrequited love ("I can't understand why I never made a play", "... and now I must suffer ... what will I become? Oh, loneliness blends with sun", etc.), the aforementioned 'Kung Fu' is one of Curtis' stranger numbers, with an almost off-key horn solo that doesn't really sound like anything else in his oeuvre, and 'To Be Invisible' is just about the loveliest chord sequence he'd written since 'The Makings of You', or possibly even 'I'm So Proud', with wonderfully melancholy lyrics about feeling anonymous in your own skin, "just a plain old human being", where "today don't mean a thing". So yeah, whilst I wouldn't call it essential listening for the casual fan, Sweet Exorcist is still a fantastic soul album by a man who could do no wrong at this point. Given my predisposition for loving the sound of Curtis Mayfield, not to mention his massive underdog status in the matchup, I'm gonna throw my vote to him here, but whether or not I actually prefer this particular album to the wonderful On The Beach is questionable. But yeah, check out this Curtis album. It's dope.
_________________
2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

[Hayden]

[sp4cetiger]

[Skinny]

[RepoMan]

[sp4cetiger]

[RepoMan]

Oops! I was talking about On The Beach!

This isn't Mayfield at the top of his game imo. (But, I do need to give it a few more spins to be sure.)