Review
Genre and Mood
Son of Dave‘s Devil Take My Soul is blues by way of funk and modern R&B. O2, the album it comes from, has been described as a mix of cotton-pickin’ blues, vocalising beat-box, hard-breathing folk, steamy funk and even modern R&B; the reviewer at Blues Bunny heard a merger of traditional blues and a popular urban sound. Gritty in Darvill’s growl and dark in its bargain, it changes colour wherever Martina Topley-Bird comes in.
Song Summary
The song makes a bargain with the devil: the singer offers his soul to bring a lover back for one more night. It is the fifth of eleven tracks on O2 and runs four minutes and sixteen seconds. Its chorus voice is Martina Topley-Bird’s, the singer the official video introduces through her work with Tricky and Massive Attack, and that second voice is what makes it memorable.
Musical Breakdown
The One-Man Band
Darvill came to his solo work, in Wikipedia’s words, as blues, beat-box and harmonica driven. No source maps the track part by part, so listen for those three: his voice, his harmonica and the beat he makes with his mouth.
The Chorus
Here the song turns. Blues Bunny heard Topley-Bird’s vocals as a welcome opposite to Darvill’s growling, and wrote that on this track he sounds positively human.
Concepts in Focus
The <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/blues/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“blues” title=“The African-American music born in the Deep South around the start of the 20th century, built on call and response, bent “blue” notes and short repeating forms such as the twelve-bar blues. Almost every later popular style, from rock and soul to house, carries some of its scales and phrasing.“>blues is the tradition O2 draws on openly: beside its own songs it covers Crossroad Blues, Rollin’ and Tumblin’ and Mannish Boy. Devil Take My Soul brings the bargain with the devil, an image the blues knows well, into a love song.
A <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist is a guest credited on another artist’s track. Topley-Bird’s chorus gives a one-man record a second character, a voice that answers the man making the bargain.
The music video on the artist’s channel is compiled from stock footage of The Corporation, Joel Bakan’s 2003 documentary, so the deal can be heard as business as well as love. The song also found a soundtrack: it was used in the Warner Bros film License to Wed, starring Robin Williams.
Artistic Context
Son of Dave is Benjamin Darvill, born in Winnipeg in 1967, who played harmonica, mandolin, guitar and percussion in Crash Test Dummies before turning to solo work in 2000. He lived in London from 1998 to 2021. O2, his third album, came out on 13 February 2006 on Kartel. Topley-Bird’s voice links it to another scene: she later sang on Warpaint’s version of The xx – Crystalised.
Impact and Reception
AllMusic gave O2 four stars out of five, and Blues Bunny thought the song could be filling dance halls around the world with the right promotion. It is here because it was among the owner’s most played songs of 2022. Listen late, and decide whether the bargain was worth it.
