A record that swaps love language for religious language every few bars should, in theory, settle on one or the other. Petal Rock Black never does, and its refusal to pick is what keeps it from curdling into wellness music or collapsing into a diary entry.
George Clinton starts the title track by reciting a strange devotional poem over silence, “storm-smeared picture,” “rust be the delirious scream,” “dreams a symphony we all soar on,” his voice old and enormous and arriving from no identifiable tradition, and by the time WILLOW enters, she brings a complaint that could have been left on a voicemail: “I don’t know why I have to Be just who you want me to.” Clinton is building a cathedral. She is trying to leave a room. The distance between those two impulses covers most of what this…

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