Sly Stone: "Get Away"

A few years have passed, so it’s time again for a Sly Stone comeback—yet another chance for an ambitious production team to help him return firstly to Earth, then to music. Unfortunately, the forthcoming I’m Back! Family & Friends—Sly’s third album with the word “back” in its title—is the kind of record you can review with a cursory glance at its tracklist: mostly inessential updates of his classics, like “Stand!” and “Thank You,” featuring guest artists; a few horrendous marketing ideas come brazenly to life (see the dubstep remix of “Family Affair”); and three novel recordings, one a gospel cover and the others brand new songs. So it’s somewhat miraculous, then, that despite the slapdash nature of the set, these two originals represent Sly’s first fresh material in more than twenty years.

The better of them is “Get Away.” Now, for folks hoping it atones for Sly’s decades of self-imposed hermitry, for a miserable live reputation, or for allowing his crippling addictions to reduce one of music’s finest improvisational minds to mush, the song is no grand resurrection. But it is decidedly Sly—not exactly a burst of social commentary via pop majesty like “Everyday People,” but comfortably recognizable dizzying funk akin to his early ‘70s album cuts, featuring the same warbling vocals, dominating bass figures, and scratching, syncopated guitars. The trademark Family Stone interplay between the instruments is gleefully here—guitars rise in the mix only once the bass completes its mastodon movement while horns stab and a spacey organ drones to fill blank space—and the programmed percussion trips over itself with clicks, snares, and claps. The chorus, meanwhile, is a simple succession of “ugh”s and “ooh”s, rhythmic grunts to acknowledge that lyrical exactitude should never get in the way of a good groove.

The sonic texture, as can be expected, is slightly off—certainly a recurring problem with the lot of these oldies artist rehabs, most of which veer toward overproduction (Aretha) or unforgivable schmaltz (sweet Christ, Rod Stewart). But with Sly, it’s a different issue: keeping in mind that the man crafted his opus using muddied overdubs, blotchy mixing, and a work ethic equal parts ambitious and lazy, it would require deliberate misuse of the studio to recreate his hazily intoxicating sound of yore. “Get Away” thus seems remarkably clean for a Sly song—listen especially for a squiggling sax solo that I can’t imagine being played by anyone but a long-haired white man—and conspicuously tame. That it hustles by in under four minutes without a blip or a glitch isn’t in strict terms a flaw; it is, however, unlike the Family Stone.

That said, this is still a new Sly song. If he were aware of the world about him, he might be more motivated to compete with the R&B artists who quote him as an influence and the rappers who repurpose his riffs; as is, he’s at least delivered a danceable track. And not without irony born of delusion: perhaps only Sly is so appropriately detached to script a song about escapism in the midst of an album situated as his umpteenth reemergence.