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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

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D'ANGELO - UNSHAKEN

[5.62]

High noon at the Ol' Jukebox...

Julian Axelrod: D'Angelo returns with an urgent ode to resilience in the face of hardship. (It's from Red Dead Redemption 2, which only makes sense if you imagine the years between Voodoo and Black Messiah were spent in front of an Xbox.) D'Angelo's voice works surprisingly well in the context of an Old West ballad, dropping several octaves into a baritone wearied by dust and time. (I haven't played Red Dead Redemption 2, but it seems like a lot of fishing and feeding horses?) Despite the aesthetic departure, "Unshaken" lacks the real-world stakes of his previous works. (Remember when Sade's big comeback was a song for A Wrinkle in Time? Is our music system so irreparably fucked that R&B legends are only doing singles for sequels and adaptions of established IP?) This is an above-average video game soundtrack and a below-average D'Angelo song. [5]

Katherine St Asaph: I will probably never play RDR2 (West of Loathing pre-emptively clowned it, anyway), but a D'Angelo soundtrack cut from the game seems like a pleasant enough takeaway, even if it's basically "Poor Wayfaring Stranger." [7]

Tim de Reuse: Don't think I'm gonna have the time to play Red Dead Redemption 2 this century, but I can see how this tune would function well in that context. Every part of the composition exists firstly as mood-setting sound design and secondly as a musical element; it'd make a lovely garnish, but there's very little meat on it by itself. [5]

Alfred Soto: Okay, a worthwhile gesture: multitracked murmurs over plucked guitars and a couple incongruous shrieks. No way is this getting daytime play on 99 Jamz, though. Repeat listening reveals a track that is the natural end of the Black Messiah sound, which got praise for the things it doesn't do instead of the things it does. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Black Messiah is my pick for the best pop album of the decade, but this reminds me little of the exquisite songwriting and masterful production of anything on that album. It's too deliberate in what it sets out to do in establishing a meandering, Western atmosphere that it never extends beyond its functionality. D'Angelo being a huge fan of the Red Dead Redemption franchise is cool in a shallow "whoa, this musician is into things typically not associated with musicians?" sort of way, but this is a throwaway track through and through. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: It's a Daniel Lanois production, and it sounds like it; this could fit easily on Robbie Robertson's self-titled 1987 album. D'Angelo adds his patented variety of hoodoo, but not so much in the way of soul. "Unshaken" sounds more like a tumbleweed-filled Western number, rooted in percussion and finger-picked guitar, and overall leaves one wanting. [5]

Jonathan Bradley: Neo-soul was a self-consciously adult music, and it could bear those weaknesses to which adults are susceptible: a persuasion that complacency is thoughtful and diffidence is maturity. It could also -- and this might be just because it was in the air during the 1990s -- get a bit new-agey. "Unshaken," however, the new song from one of neo-soul's defining figures, is deliberately and even carefully gritty. It is, after all, a mood piece for an Old West video game; a lot of 21st-century dollars go into those electronic costume dramas. Gospel and gothic are aesthetics that complement one another well, and they offer D'Angelo new terrain over which to ride. (For a start: tense acoustic guitar runs that could summon Chris Isaak if the moonlight were just right.) He makes the most of it -- which makes it a very well done mood piece. [5]

Pedro João Santos: The scenery is filmic, somehow both arid and lush: shy guitars, muted drums and handclaps bringing to mind the shadowed figure of a traveler in the desert, which assumes the form of one singular voice. "Unshaken" flows like a natural progression from Black Messiah's earthly sonics, the tempesting punctuation of drums and bass smoothened for a more spellbinding -- also less playful -- experience. D'Angelo establishes dominium not through instrumental virtuosity but by oscillating vocal textures, never tentative, but ever growing in power: only through his voice he conjures up new worlds and paths untraveled that Red Dead Redemption 2 can only dream of. What strikes me as strange is possibly how limited the mindset, which is repeated and carved deeply into the song, might be (and I'm deliberately overlooking the in-game context; I suspect by the standalone release of the song that it might not be that important after all). I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't know whether you should stay intact around "a crashing world." It's probably crumbling for some reason that needs to be understood. While it might not be necessarily good to attune to that change, putting up walls is never a good thing. [8]

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#D'Angelo #pop #soul #neo-soul #Red Dead Redemption 2 #music #music review #writing

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