1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 331. Earth Wind And Fire – That's The Way Of The World (1975)

 

Earth, Wind and Fire (no Oxford comma) give us some funk and soul grooves. Band leader Maurice White keeps it tight – funk and soul is a genre that can be played very loosely and laid-back, but here every note seems carefully placed, the tunes, both fast and slow, are clean and precise in a way that doesn’t detract from the feeling of the music.

It does make EWF different from the likes of War, Sly Stone, or Parliament, who are all a little dirtier. I was surprised that there only three vocalists – White, his brother Verdine White (who tends to bass) and Philip Bailey, who can take a falsetto up to amazing heights. There must be over-tracking because the vocal sound is gloriously rich. And as with any funk, the bass does a lot of the heavy lifting, in this case Verdine White working some magic.

Some songs blend in African beats (the aptly-named Africano) and Latin, especially See The Light. There’s a sense of a step towards disco as well, especially on tracks like Shinin’ Star – if the horns were swapped for strings, it might be close; the white flared suits worn by some of the band on the cover is another very disco thing.

I’m not normally a fan of the slow soul numbers, but the ones on here, especially Reasons, really worked for me. I still don’t think they’re tracks I’d rush back to listen to, but the production was so crisp that all the disparate elements felt like a group all working as one, and Bailey’s vocal is out of this world. I still generally prefer the funkier tracks, but this album really feels like it does for funk and soul what Eagles did for country rock – make extremely solid yet accessible tracks that would appeal to the general radio audience.