Isley Brothers Go For Your Guns

Although there’s plenty of frantic disco-funk on this release, Go For Your Guns found the Isley Brothers inching into the slow grooves of their quiet storm era. Its most enduring tracks, “Voyage to Atlantis” and “Footsteps in the Dark”, feature the same ambitious jams and improvisation that the group had made its signature through the ’70s, but taken down to a more intimate, seductive tempo. Those two songs also found the group once again working ahead of its time: Neither was a hit upon its release (“Footsteps in the Dark” wasn’t even put out as a single), but it wasn’t long before they became the most beloved entries on the double-platinum album. The drums alone on “Footsteps in the Dark” are iconic; once the guitar and bass enter, you’re hearing the bedrock for songs by everyone from Ice Cube (“It Was a Good Day”) to Usher to J Dilla. Most of the song, including the lyrics, were crafted by Ernie—best known as the group’s virtuoso guitar player, he actually started on drums and is also behind the addictive, understated beat on this record. The family band slowly adds layered, almost contrapuntal riffs as the song progresses beneath Ronald’s soaring falsetto. Ernie is also the key to “Voyage to Atlantis”, opening the track with a guitar solo and setting the stage for “Choosey Lover”—the pair of which helped make shredding sexy. Upon its release, Go For Your Guns’ most successful songs were “Livin’ in the Life” and “The Pride”, two earthy dance jams that resisted pop gloss in favour of rockish grit, proving anyone who thought disco and rock were at odds clearly just hadn’t listened to the Isley Brothers. At the height of their most commercially successful period, the band kept shifting and evolving, offering up relentlessly original music that everyone wanted to dance to.