CD: All I Have Is Love, Love, Love

ARTISTE: Gregory Isaacs

LABEL: Tads Records

The picture of Gregory Isaacs on the cover of All I Have Is Love, Love, Love dates the Tads Records-produced album. The Cool Ruler has locks down to the lapels of his jacket in the performance shot, wearing the typical performance half smile, but looking significantly younger than he now does.

If that is not enough, then drummer Carlton Barrett is listed in the credits and the former Wailer's member was killed in 1987.

(The cover is terrible, by the way, the colours dull, the name of the album squeezed into the lower right hand corner. The picture takes precedence, but it is not strong enough to sell the album.)

So, despite the 2006 date on the 16-song collection, it is not new music on All I Have Is Love, Love, Love - the title track (real name minus the two last loves); Hard Drugs; the (for me, at least) hard to get on album One Man Against The World and You Brought Me, the well-known tracks.

Nothing spectacular

The version of One Man Against The World on this set, which begins with Isaacs singing to the hi-hat and keyboards before the music all comes in, is not the one made popular by radio and lacks that impact.

It is actually a 14-track album, as there are remixes of Hard Drugs and Bang Belly. The former is heavily dependent on reverbs and harmonies and is nothing spectacular with an insistent 'more, more' by the back-up singers. Harmonies are again utilised heavily in the remix of Bang Belly, with the addition of horns, with again less than very distinctive results on a song that celebrates pregnancy ('she fight gainst abortion/she no deal with family plan/all she want is a nice dreadlocks man.').

Uptempo numbers

All I Have Is Love, Love, Love is big on slow numbers, Easy Lover among the few more uptempo numbers. Big, but not necessarily strong, as Sad and Lonely Man and Just Be Nice drag. Settle Nuh is a rare departure from topics of love and heartache, as Isaacs asks the selector at a party, "Mr. Deejay would you play the track for me once more?" and then advises, "daughter, sekkle nuh?" in giving dancing advice.

So Isaacs drops a couple of the trademark groaning 'mmmms' on Nobody Know and First Aid, turns a market trip into a basket of near romance in Coronation Market ('she was on her way to Coronation Market/to get some food in her basket/all of a sudden she sight Mr. Smith/he told her to wait a little bit') and the storytelling style of songwriting continues to the end with the closing Footsteps ('I search the sun and the stars and the moon/never thought it would happen so soon/I found someone else's footsteps in your living room.'). Still, there are too many misses and too few hits to make All I Have Is Love, Love, Love a notable effort.

- Mel Cooke

Track listing

1. Hard Drugs

2. Nobody Know

3. All I Have is Love

4. Bang Belly

5. Sad and Lonely Man

6. Settle Nuh

7. One Man Against the World

8. Coronation Market

9. Hard Drugs (Remix) 2005

10. First Aid

11. Just Be Nice

12. Bang Belly (Remix) 2005

13. Easy Lover

14. When I Need A Friend

15. You Brought Me

16. Footsteps