The O'Jays: So Full Of Love : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Just when the O'Jays had been given up for dead–ODed on disco–they surprised everyone with a hit single and, more importantly, their best LP in years. The breeziness of "Use Ta Be My Girl" sounds refreshing in the midst of a long, hot summer, and the rest of So Full of Love is equally airy. It's a silky, not a sweaty, album since the O'Jays have sweetened their usual overwrought gospel approach with an easygoing charm. They now sing rather than sermonize, partly because their primary writers and producers, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, have taken a long-needed vacation from preachy prattle. And "The Sound of Philadelphia" has lightened up, too: So Full of Love retreats from overbearing disco to an old-fashioned but never outmoded elegance. Indeed, at times this could almost be an album by the Spinners, and it's not coincidental that Thom Bell, the man behind the Spinners, produced two of these tracks.

Another cut might have been performed by a group as nostalgic as the Manhattans. "Cry Together" is a stately ballad that begins with a bass monologue that, far from being corny, is strikingly eloquent. The song dramatizes a three-in-the-morning reconciliation between a man and a woman who have been sharing a bed but not their souls. Their sullen estrangement dissolves first into tears and then into lovemaking, an act which the vocals invest with such delicacy that it seems breath-takingly chaste. In the past, the O'Jays have more often than not moved only the feet. But on "Cry Together," and on the soft, sumptuous refrain of "Brandy," they move the heart–even if "Brandy" (a new song that shouldn't be confused with the chestnut by Looking Glass) is addressed, as I suspect, to a dog rather than a woman.

But the O'Jays haven't hung up their dancing shoes for good. "Strokety Stroke," written and produced by Bunny Sigler, stomps like a brontosaurus with St. Vitus' dance, and "Take Me to the Stars" rockets along playfully. "I'm gonna keep on singing till I can't sing no more," the group vows in a line from "Sing My Heart Out." So Full of Love is a joyous demonstration that the O'Jays can sing a lot more.