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SXSW review: Raphael Saadiq
Raphael Saadiq performs Friday night at the Austin Music Hall.
Soul musicians know how to entertain — perhaps better than those working in any other genre. From titans of old like Sam Cooke, James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone straight through to the revival pleasures of Maxwell or Austin’s own Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, no one knows how to play a crowd like a fiddle — or a bass guitar — quite like a soul man (or woman).
That goes double for Raphael Saadiq, the former Tony! Toni! Tone! member whose emergence as a superhero of neosoul is now thoroughly complete. Appearing before a rapturous crowd at the Austin Music Hall Friday night — as part of one SXSW’s most well-curated showcases — Saadiq boogied onto the stage as a vision in red, garbed in an appropriately passion-evoking red suit with an invigorating performance of “100 Yard Dash,” the addictive single off 2008’s “The Way I See It.”
Ably assisted by a formally attired, crack backing band — including an assistant whose sole job was to gather up the clothes Saadiq removed throughout the show — Saadiq blasted through a half hour of songs off “The Way I See It” and a couple of old numbers. As the songs wore on, “100 Yard Dash” turning to the horn-bolstered swagger of “Keep Marching On” and “Sure Hope You Mean It,” off came the clothes — first the jacket, then the tie, then the glasses. For a bit there midway through the show, it looked like Saadiq might well end up naked.
That would have been appropriate for the rawly sexual swagger of the silk-voiced Saadiq, who milked the opening lines of “Take A Walk” (“I need some sex/Some Sex With You) for all they were worth in audience reaction with ample gesticulations. He even took a sharp left turn into rock star territory, letting his inner axe men loose with an impressive electric guitar solo on “Blind Man.”
The set closed with an inviting rendition of “Staying In Love,” with Saadiq, ever a class act, thanking each member of the band individually — an act particularly savored by the keyboard player, who killed a vocal solo with extreme prejudice. Full of instrumental jams, it was about three times as long as the album version of “Staying In Love,” a perfect piece of pop neosoul that has only one problem: it’s criminally short.
In other words, the exact same problem as Saadiq’s live show.
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