Taken Away dispenses immersion therapy like last year’s woozy beaut, Sinner, and stinks of George Clinton like 2014’s self-titled long-player. But there’s often an ache where the fun used to be. There’s funk, in both senses of the world. “Goodbye Everybody” summons Lowell Fulson’s “Prison Bound,” swapping the original’s bluesy stomp for a roiling swamp of what sound like detuned bells and percussion that hisses like tasers. It’s closer in spirit to Erykah Badu than, say, boompty house. The crisp breaks and comfy swing of “Let Me In” could be legit Badu, or even Mary J., but Moodymann counters the grace of the (uncredited) female voices with spite: “You’ve never been a good soul to anyone/Especially me.”
Most of Taken Away is fascinatingly ambivalent. A couple tracks lose their balance altogether. “I’m Already Hi” is a person-to-person skit backed up with some light jazz and scatting. It’s fine if what you want from one of the greatest house producers alive is a skit; if not, well, it’s over soon. Less funny are the album’s opener and closer, two versions of “Do Wrong” built on Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” but without much of either. Mixed deep in a midtempo shuffle of organ and tambourine and preacher calls, Moodymann sourly brings receipts to a no-good ex. “You’ve got me back in church,” he sneers, in a way that sounds more like he’d been punished than redeemed. Green was perhaps the most tender of soul singers; he also, among other cruelties, beat his pregnant wife with a boot when she refused to have sex with him. Moodymann chants, “You better find a way to love me/’Cause if you don’t, somebody else will,” while Green eggs him on with wait-a-minutes and yeahs. The groove might get your head bopping with a bad taste in your mouth, wondering if she’s better off without him...
- From Review by Jesse Dorris for Pitchfork
