Hit and Run

Bar-Kays by this period had rebuilt themselves entirely after losing most of their original lineup in the Otis Redding plane crash, and the version of the group that made "Hit and Run" was a harder, more street-level proposition — the Memphis soul legacy transmuted into something with angular edges and real menace. The track opens on a guitar riff that has the quality of a provocation, sharp and slightly confrontational, before the rhythm section drops in with a locked, driving groove that owes as much to James Brown's hardest 70s work as it does to anything from the Southern soul tradition. The production is dry and close, drums mixed with more presence than polish, which gives the whole thing a liveness that studio-smooth funk often sacrifices. The vocals carry a roughness — not technically raw, but emotionally unguarded, like the singer is more interested in conveying urgency than in demonstrating range. Lyrically the song deals in the language of pursuit and evasion, motion and consequence, which the musical momentum enacts rather than merely illustrates. There's a sweat to it, a physicality that makes it different from the cooler, more cerebral funk being made elsewhere. This is driving music, or fighting music, or music for the precise moment in the night when pleasantness has worn off and something more honest is required.