My first album review of the day from acts that took part in Glastonbury and what a way to start it. I have to say my hopes of this album being good were quite low because R&B and soul these day tends to be a whiney high-pitched mess with dire lyrics and ironically no soul - James Hunter however is a complete exception and takes the listener back to the 50s and 60s with his simple but effective brand of old school soul.
The lyrics are catchy and sung with gravel, the topics are quite "sweet" and typical of times when artists sung about girls and common situations rather than trying to make things too complicated.
The music has a touch of blues about it and James Hunter manages to pull off a fairly impressive voice that sounds like a mixture of Otis Redding, James Brown and Sam Cooke with a dash of Ray Charles thrown in. James Hunter kind of makes you question why more artists don't sing like this today, combining melodic notes with a bit of gravel perfectly.
James Hunter writes the music that accompanies his work and then lets his band members improve upon it.
Carina and The Hard Way are my favourite tracks of the album and I'd say that She's Got A Way is my least favourite, perhaps because it seems a little less soulful and a bit more repetitive, there's not a particularly weak song at all on this album. I didn't know about this album last year when it came out but if I did it would have made it into one of my top lists of 2008.
1 The Hard Way
2 Tell Her
3 Don't Do Me No Favours
4 Carina
5 She's Got A Way
6 Til The End
7 Hand It Over
8 Jacqueline
9 Class Act
10 Ain't Goin' Nowhere
11 Believe Me Baby
12 Strange But True
1 comments:
Dear Mr. Learn By Laughing,
How can I contact you? You reviewed my last album and I didn't even realize it until now! But I was so excited when I saw it!
-Cause a Rockslide AKA Tim Cheplick (yes, this is a Badly Drawn Boy reference)
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