Your Love Is My Desire (2024 Remastered)

Album review

Ever since a glut of reissues in the late '90s and early '00s kicked off a wave of recognition for long-forgotten (or never-known) funk and soul albums, it seems like a week doesn’t go by without learning another "holy grail" finally being repressed. Of course, not every grail is all that holy, and if we're being honest with ourselves, a not insignificant number of those rescues from the back of the crates could have just been left there in the first place. So, what to make of the reissue of Your Love Is My Desire, the debut album by a Detroit group with a weird name that, Jethro Tull-style, often had them mistaken for a solo act? An album that was released in 1980 on the then-waning Westbound Records label? An album that—checks notes—fetches around $500 whenever a decent original vinyl copy shows up for sale? Well, Your Love Is My Desire may not exactly be "holy grail" material, as it's been reissued a few times since its primary release, and sonically it's far from the sort of obscure funk arcana that drives collectors crazy. Instead, it's the sort of aficionado's darling that actually deserves the wider reissue  it's getting via the revived Westbound Records.

Your Love Is My Desire came at a pretty weird time for R&B and funk, particularly the sort of P-Funk-adjacent sounds on which Westbound had made its reputation. Disco was dead, two-step had taken over the dancefloor, and most radio stations had decidedly shifted their focus to pop-friendly singers and slow jam balladry. But there was still a robust market for well-crafted funk, and bands like Fatback, the Gap Band, Cameo, and, yes, even Kool & the Gang delivered "real music by real musicians'' for those who wanted the grit and melodicism of classic soul combined with taut, groove-oriented jams. Eramus Hall should have been as well-known as any of those bands, as evidenced by the high quality of the material on Your Love Is My Desire, which stretches across a wide and diverse array of funk styles, easily commingling the approaches of P-Funk (call-and-response lunacy), Kool and the Gang (big, brassy horns), Earth, Wind & Fire (the group harmonies on "Think Positively"), and Ohio Players ("Feelin' Higher" is a straight rip-off of "Fire" and it absolutely rules). Amazingly, it also manages to predict the sounds that would soon come to dominate pre-hip-hop R&B radio ("Stuck in the Mudd" may well be the song that gave Prince the inspiration for Morris Day's vocal style in the Time). While every song here is a strong one, the album fails to come together into a cohesive identity, which may ultimately be what led to its obscurity. While Eramus Hall would release a follow-up a few years later on a different label (and with several members of P-Funk in tow), Your Love was ultimately their greatest achievement, expertly documenting the unique range and appeal of a specific time in soul music history. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz