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Halfway through the languid midtempo ballad “Send It On” from D’Angelo’s new sophomore effort, Voodoo, the young retro-soul maestro and band shift tempo and melody. It’s a move so understatedly dramatic that it elicits comparisons not just to obvious touchstones Marvin Gaye and Al Green, but to the Jimi Hendrix of Axis: Bold as Love et Electric Ladyland. While Voodoo is hardly in a league with such major statements, it’s a record inviting enough to attract repeated plays of its 78-minute length. As on his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo covers a wide range of concerns–sex, home cooking, the destructive side of current street life–in a deceptively offhand manner. But he’s a crafty craftsman: even a throwaway workout like “Chicken Grease” is blessed not only with a slinky groove and a guitar lick that deserves to be called just that, but bursts of Gaye-style vocal harmonies; the whole track, for all its retro flavor, ends up sounding like nothing else around. Throw in the blasts of anger that fire “Devil’s Pie,” the restatement of Bono’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in “Greatdayindamornin’,” and the complete takeover of Roberta Flack’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” and Voodoo proves one jam that was well worth the nearly five-year wait. –Rickey Wright
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