Aretha Two: And the Title Goes To...

Lady Soul

Such was the impact of I Never Loved a Man… that no one batted an eye at the title of this follow up album.

After the white hot vocals of I Never Loved a Man… she dials it back ever so slightly here. The rhythms are dialed back a bit, too. Not a problem. If anything she might be even more focused, and the band really cooks.

The material, though, is slightly weaker. (The best songs lead off and end each side (if you remember what a “side” is, that is) I think she senses this. Yet she doesn’t overplay her hand by oversinging. Pretty smart, if you ask me.

Her covers compete with the originals: I think I prefer her version of “Money Won’t Change You” to James Brown (but I’ve still got that mountain to climb). “People Get Ready” is fine but not quite on the level of the Impressions.  “Come Back Baby” is up there with Ray Charles’ (and let’s not forget Hot Tuna’s!). “Groovin” is okay but I’m not sure it gives her room to add much to it.

Of course “Natural Woman” is one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded (Thank you again Carole King!) with a an utterly transcendent bridge (starting at 1:45) and perhaps the greatest use of strings on a pop record ever.  A great to be alive record.

“Since You’ve Been Gone” is just So. Damned. Insistent. Whew, I need to sit down.

And there's little old Eric Clapton showing up as a guest on “Good As I Am To You”, but you could easily miss it because of how Aretha wails. Who’s the idiot who said she was dialing it back?

The closer, “Ain’t No Way” tries to match this intensity of “Natural Woman”, and actually has a better vocal, but the song itself comes up short, but that just means instead of it being great it’s merely damned good.

As is the album overall. So I give the edge to I Never Loved a Man…, which is a little more consistent and has more songs. But if you want to be entertained, and amazed by that voice, and you can’t find your copy of that record, this one will do just fine.

B+

“Natural Woman”

My 2011 - Winter of My Discontent

By January 2nd of any given year, I'm already plotting on how to use my Christmas gift cards to buy the records I'm afraid to get with my own money.  These are the more risky records – “reaches”, whether due to genre or by their reputation for being “experimental”. In a word, educational. Something I can hide in during my Seasonal Affective Disorder.

So I got a record that has appeared on so many All Time Great Lists, I was ashamed of not having gotten it already - Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 and 2.  I was very hesitant about this one, because my taste in country music is very finicky (the line between deep - Hank Williams - and idiotic - Hank Williams Jr. - isn't easy for a non-country fan to discern).  Plus, having been ruined by the Beatles (me, that is, loving the electric guitar above all) soul music came to me slowly.  I didn't even like Motown until the 70s.  I now get funk but am still working on hip hop.  Pathetic, really.

But enough about me.  How was the record?  Well, at first, it sucked, actually.  The backing chorus repeating every important line annoyed the sh*t out of me, reminding me of nothinmuch as the muzak station playing in my dentist's office when I was a kid.  So I had to leave it alone for awhile. 

Now I'm back and it all sounds perfectly natural.  The soul approach saps the potential, well, sappiness of the country tunes, and those tunes add a little more melody than typical soul music.  I listened again last night and it just keeps getting better.  The best of both worlds, I say.  B+, and rising.

But then blammo!  SAD?  Fekking miserable is more like it. But this time, there were actual reasons for it.  Floods? Starvation, you ask? Nope. Just work related stuff, which is all that it takes to set me off. 

And unfortunately, music isn’t always the cure. If you try to force music onto a bad time, you just end up with a miserable time set to music you’ll never want to hear again, no matter how good it is, simply because it reminds you of that awful time.  It’s better to just ride it out.

Next: Springtime for Jaybee