Consumer Guide Album

Al Green: Al Green Explores Your Mind [Hi, 1974]
At first I found this a depressing combination of trivial ambitions and simple greed--the hit, "Sha-La-La," is his slightest to date, and side two might easily have been unflattened with a cover. But I kept playing "Sha-La-La" to reach "Take Me to the River," a synthesis of the spiritual root of Green's music (call it God) and its emotional referent (by which I mean sex) that may be his greatest song. And in the end I loved "Sha-La-La" too. B+