Apologies for the lack of any activity around these parts in the past week; between working on about half a dozen post ideas right now, getting my year-end write-ups out of the way, and making my way through 8 Diagrams (2007) and The Big Doe Rehab (2007), finding time to drop even a Song of the Week has been tough. Until I can get my act together this weekend, enjoy this post I wrote for EarFuzz earlier this year.

The sweetest of ’70s Soul has always been about summertime and sunshine for me, so during these dreary days of November in New England I’ll occasionally have to remind myself that June is only… eight… months… away by digging out some of the more ignored Soul records in my collection. Recently I’ve taken a certain fascination with Sylvia Robinson’s Pillow Talk (1973), and the more I listen, the more I become attuned to how utterly strange this record is. An explanation is probably in order.

Regardless of one’s feelings about Robinson as a cold, heartless businesswoman (see: The Sugarhill Gang, a discussion for another time), she nevertheless had a long and successful career in the music industry, beginning in the late ’50s as the latter half of Mickey & Sylvia, most remembered for their single “Love is Strange.” During the ’60s she worked behind the scenes, nurturing New Jersey trio The Moments to stardom while raising her family. She began releasing solo records under her first name in the ’70s, moving into bedroom disco and even hip hop during the ’80s. Yet while many of her contemporaries patiently waited by the assembly line for producers to churn out chart-toppers for them, Robinson actively played a hand in shaping her own career, writing or co-writing most of her material and supervising the daily operations of running her record label with her husband, Joe. She was also a hell of a guitar player to boot.

Still, listening to Pillow Talk, one gets the impression that something just isn’t right, but it’s difficult to place a finger on what it is. It’s a pleasant listen, to be sure, undeniably sensual and full of slithering, late-night grooves. Perhaps it’s Sylvia’s reserved presence and somewhat hesitant delivery, at times sounding as if she’s curled up on the couch in the control room, intimidated and cradling the microphone; others, her whispery coos and moans have all the sincerity of a minimum-wage phone-sex operator. But there is a certain intimacy in her voice that connects with the listener despite the fact that it’s quizzically buried in the mix most of the time. “Gimme a Little Action” is one such example, a sleeper cut that would have benefited tremendously from a boost of Sylvia’s vocal track, yet she seems content to cuddle into her surroundings, treating her voice as equally as the other instruments of pleasure. And oddly enough, it works.

“Gimme a Little Action” – Sylvia 4:00 (Pillow Talk, Vibration 1973)

“Sunday” was written for Sylvia’s brother’s fiancee, who tragically died in a car accident the night before they were to be married. It sounds unlike any of the other selections here, a haunting ballad with just Sylvia, her acoustic guitar, and a lone cello. The atmosphere calls to mind something out of a Country-Western musical from the ’60s, with Sylvia’s cries echoing throughout the moonlit desert canyon long after her companions have fallen asleep by the campfire. (Attentive listeners will recognize this track as the basis for Ghostface’s “The Letter” skit from The Pretty Tony Album [2004].) Compared to the relatively standard instrumentation and arrangements of the original Moments version, the two are like night and day.

“Sunday” – Sylvia 3:12 (Pillow Talk, Vibration 1973)

“Sunday” – The Moments 2:47 (Not on the Outside, But Inside In!, Stang 1968)

Pillow Talk is definitely worth checking out, if only for two reasons: 1) there are few records of the era that sound remotely similar to it (keep in mind that this stuff was pretty risque for the time), and 2) a seven-minute version of “Not on the Outside” where Sylvia seductively introduces her “little band,” then instructs her guitar player on how to play his solo as if he were forcibly pleasuring her. Bizarre, to say the least.