War: Deliver the Word : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Eh, 50-50. Half of this newest War album is definitely out and about, the rest, a stone drag. As has been the case with War's other post-Burdon efforts, Deliver The Word is plagued by an annoying unevenness—the band alternately stuns with their virtuosity, only to disappoint the aroused listener by lapsing into merely trite Afro-funk. That a group could be so creative and uninspired on the same disk is maddening.

Despite this indictment, under no circumstances should the reader get the impression that Deliver The Word is just another candidate for the "file and forget" bins. Like the goodies on platters past (e.g., "Slippin' Into Darkness," "City, Country, City" and "The World Is a Ghetto"), this LP's many fine moments are marked by maturity, the products of a musical consciousness forged by discipline, intelligence and a wide range of experience. "H2 Overture" displays the intelligence that marks War's brighter moments. The instrumental is a carefully-constructed collage of several influences, much like "City, Country, City" in design as it uses sharp changes in tempo and structure to create stark contrasts in setting and mood. Many of its themes are familiar, copped from sources as divergent as Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway and Midnight Cowboy's soundtrack. More important than their being borrowed is that they gain significantly in the transition.

The breadth of War's musical experience is obvious throughout the lengthy "Gypsy Man." And their gypsy is the true space-age nomad, as the song is best described as Hawkwind meets the Chambers Brothers! Speeding along like an asteroid through space's void, the song is relentless with its high-powered rhythm drive, unbearably intense with its pointed soloing and choral harmonies. It's original and the group's creativity sparkles in both concept and performance. Lonnie Jordan is magnificent on organ and ARP violin, and Lee Oskar blows a truly dynamite harp.

"Deliver The Word" conjures up a distinct mid-Sixties soul feeling through its vocal portion (drawing heavily upon the Four Tops), then segues into a soul-wrenching electric piano break so effective that the new mood overwhelms the vocal refrain. It's a very disciplined track, immediately personal in tone, and the razor-sharp professionalism accompanying this remarkable one-to-one extension makes the title tune the album's most affecting effort.

The bluesy "Blisters" instrumental (with harp lines somewhat reminiscent of Shakey Horton) rounds out the high points of this outing. But three other songs do little more than restate a riff ad infinitum. There's little to distinguish "In Your Eyes," "Me and Baby Brother" and "Southern Part of Texas" from the blind-mind boogalooing of dime-a-dozen dingalings like Mandrill—each is based on an initially funky bass riff that soon becomes both repetitive and boring as hell. There's near-zero intellectual content to each song, and denied the opportunity to be instrumentally creative, War is stripped of the very virtue that makes their music so interesting in the first place. For such an intelligent, inventive lot to be playing such piddling tripe is a terrible waste of both time and talent.

Four good numbers—Deliver The Word might have made a killer EP, but then they just don't do things that way here in the old USA. So for now we'll have to take the meat this band has to offer along with the fat, which in the long run is probably well worth the aggravation. For, with but half an album of magnificence, War has already surpassed the combined works of 98% of their ilk. If they were finally to come up with an album that shows them only at their best, the shocks in soul land would probably be so reverberating that War's "competition" would probably crumble, fade and just plain cease to exist.