SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE — There's a Riot Goin' On (review)

SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE — There's a Riot Goin' On album cover Album · 1971 · Funk Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Warthur
Rock fans acquainted with the history of Pink Floyd will know how after their debut album Syd Barrett soon ran into some severe issues, and under the influence of heavy drug use transformed into a troubled introvert whose musical output revealed a rapidly crumbling psyche. Well, imagine the album which Pink Floyd might have produced if they had stuck around with Syd and provided a full band backing to his ideas rather than retiring him from the band to make his sparse solo albums; There's a Riot Goin' On is the funk equivalent of that.

Sly's drug-affected behaviour from this era is legendary, as is the dark tone of the album; the sunny optimism of Stand! is gone, the Sixties are well and truly over and the Seventies are here to stay, and whilst the opening Luv n' Haight's refrain of "feel so good, feel so good, wanna move, wanna move" ought to be uplifting, it feels more compulsive and involuntary, the product of a nervous energy which infuses the album. Drowning in a swamp of fuzz, There's a Riot Goin' On is the sound of a funk pioneer caught in the quicksand of drug abuse and yet still possessing the insight to produce this devastating look at how the dream of the Woodstock Nation, the civil rights era, and all the movements that had informed Stand! had met with setbacks, failure, and deep, deep trouble in the intervening years.
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