Out of sync, new trend?

I guess ideally something in between perfect strict time and vibe/groove is best ?

I don't know how it was done by the likes of Lindsey Buckingham back in the good ol' days, but speaking as someone who tries to do as much as I can in the studio, playing all the tracks, etc. I'm becoming more and more aware of how my bass playing doesn't always line up nicely with my piano/guitar playing and singing., and how the drummer that comes in to do the session after just a few tracks are down has to deal with how all that slop sits mostly in front of the click, etc.  I know part of it is that I am not a first class player; I consider myself a singer/songwriter first and foremost, but even after applying some subtle flexing to smooth things out, I wonder how much the 'back and forth' between the asynchronous musicians sounds different than if there were 4 or 5 of me's recording live and reacting to each others' tempo shifts in real time. 

Sure... let's go with the "sloppy and shitty is feel" bollocks. OR... maybe we think that at least the kick and bass should line up once in a while, and it might be nice if the snare and guitar & piano chords were close to being together on the 2&4, once in a while? You know, like professionals do?

(OUCH, my eyes rolled so far back in my head then it hurt)

Right when the guitar comes in at :23, it's all over the place. I agree with Ward. I'm not offended by the looseness of the track, but it does come in wonky and slither around throughout.

and pardon my A.O.G./Pentecostal swearing there.

Latency, latency and latency, My light bulb moment was when I played bass live with the drummer it was lock in recording bass after mmmm no. Its not good enough to just rely on your daws loop back results Test it loop the output back to the input and adjust as necessary until it lines up. Don't use digital monitoring the latency hurts your playing especially bass and drums.

For me, the key to a track with a loose feel but acceptably modern starts with a real good drummer (obviously) who can track with a click. They don't have to be perfectly in line with the click but preferably really close all the time on the downbeat. What happens between downbeats gives the rhythm it's movement and human feel. This should be unedited if the drummer is good.

What I'll do is then line bass guitar with drums BUT usually moving the bass notes just ever so slightly behind kick and snare transients. If you listen and align these bass notes you can get the kick and snare to have much more punch and become fuller. Plus it gives the track a nicer groove because the bass player sounds "laid back" and in the pocket. You must listen to your moves though, don't just line them up and think everything is going to be great because you have your drum transient and bass transient in the same place every time.

Guitarists are always all over the place and usually rushing - I'm one of those guys. This is usually ok if the guitar player is good and is close. This is certainly an element that will provide that push/pull feel.

The icing on the cake is the compression. If you use the compressor so that its shaving off just 1-3db on all of these instruments (and again the performances were good) you can create that "whack-a-mole" effect in a nice subtle manner. Great for dynamics while also highlighting more of the push/pull between players.

If he is a drummer, too, then maybe he knows what he's doing and it's an artistic choice.

I think the "sloppyness" is very deliberate syncopation. The bass seems to always land a 16th behind the kick, and there's a few patterns in it like that. It seems like looped "loose" parts. It'd feel way less busy if you quantized it.

+1. Surprised that noone followed up on this. I mean there's really a clear line pre and post Vodoo (was it around year 2000?). Some rappers like Snoop did stretch a bit before that, but that was mostly the vocals/rap done really laid back. But to me it was obvious the big impact Vodoo made. Suddenly there were many productions that experimented with grooves like this and it was really trendy for a while. I am teaching part time and another perspective was seeing how hugely influenced my students were by this album.
I also remember an interview w Pino Palladino (bass on Vodoo) joking that he thought he might get unemployed after the release of the album.

It's probably in sync. The problem with that is a properly timed beginning of a note rarely falls on a grid.