Al Green - Lay It Down(Blue Note, 2008)7 out of 10Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson did not make his love for Amy Winehouse's Back to Black a secret when it first came out, before "Rehab" was an international smash. He claimed on his Myspace blog that Black was the record he wanted Christina Aguilera to make. Thompson supposedly also wanted to produce the comeback of Bill Withers, but instead ended up with the Al Green project. Thompson's fascination with the feeling of some old rhythm records is not surprising. He is foremost a record collector, a DJ, a drummer who learned by studying records: a man who lives the music he loves enough to unapologetically let the obsession define, often, the music he makes.I have listened to and deeply admired Thompson's work with the Roots for some time now, but my knowledge of Al Green's discography consists of 1972's I'm Still in Love with You, 1973's Call Me, "Let's Stay Together," "Take Me to the River," "Tired of Being Alone" ... let's say that's probably it. That, and I've heard snatches of his last two albums, which constituted a comeback to some degree, apparently, what with a reteaming of Green and vintage producer Willie Mitchell, though not a retrieval of the timbres and feels that the early '70s made seem so effortless. ?uestlove, his production cohort James Poyser, Al Green and Blue Note Records would all probably agree that this album, now, Lay It Down, were any of his post-classic works to grace my ears eventually, is the one for someone like me.Willie Mitchell — I reiterate — did not, on this decade's I Can't Stop and Everything's OK, return to the sumptuous sound of his canonized Al Green productions. The buzz here, on this year's Lay It Down, is that Thompson and Poyser have pulled a Ronson/Dap-Kings and turned on the time machine, and then hired the Dap-Kings' horn players, one of those fabled "good measure" tactics. The buzz seems about right. The sound is warm 'n' funky, smooth 'n' heavy, just the way Mitchell turned it out on "Love and Happiness" (the stew-stirring train groove of which is nodded to at the coda of "No One Like You"). Everything is very subtle. Old-time session player, the now-late Chalmers "Spanky" Alford, joins the crew of youngsters and plays the guitar about as beautifully as I'd like someone in soul music to do; I had to instant-replay the sultry arpeggios in the not-as-slow-jam (they're all kind of slow jams, aren't they?) "What More Do You Want from Me," actually my favorite song on Lay It Down. John Legend, Anthony Hamilton and Corinne Bailey Rae show up and don't screw anything up. Meanwhile, idiots all over the world are losing bets against the odds that ?uestlove would deliver a flawless drum performance and sound, worthy of Mr. Green's stature. Al Green? He writes and sings all over the damn thing and sounds like he did back when he made those inescapable records, and I mean inescapable now, I mean it's funny how I really just keep hearing that classic Al Green and people just can't get enough of it. Am I one of those people? Maybe you can tell by now that, oddly, no, I'm not. I am not sure what it is. It is a well-aged R&B thumbprint that pleases me, and it doesn't really penetrate that surface-level pleasure. It strikes me as oddly cerebral, a thing to appreciate for its arrangement, its uniqueness, more than a thing to move me. Perhaps it's that I gravitate towards James Brown, Prince, Sly, the more outrageous takes on R&B energy. Perhaps it's that the Reverend is the type of artist who seems to live and die by the sound of his records, no matter how much soul he puts out there through his singing or how many decent chord progressions his band can run through. Me, I listen to Lay It Down more as an appreciator of the varied efforts of Mr. Thompson, who does an undoubtedly exceptional job, and so does Mr. Green and so do their whole band 'n' crew. You can safely envision a higher level of enthusiasm from someone who more idolizes the work of this perennial artist. -Spencer OwenLay It Down comes out on 5/29.