Send "Sharon Jones and the Dap" Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 If you’ve seen soul revivalists Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings live in concert, you know one thing. Sharon Jones is not merely a performer, she is an entertainer – and one of the most consummate quality. A Sharon Jones concert is a transcendent experience, and she certainly knows how to milk expectation. In fact, she doesn’t walk out onto the stage until her band and backup singers have sufficiently warmed up the audience, and it actually takes about 20 minutes into the set before you get the main attraction. However, whenever Ms. Jones does saunter out, she does so with so much unbridled energy and enthusiasm, you have to wonder how she manages to belt out what will soon be considered soul standards on the level of anything in Aretha Franklin’s catalog (at least, I damn well hope so) while moving and sashaying around the stage. What’s more, a Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings concert is a participatory one: the augmentative singer brings up both men and women from the audience to dance around with her. If you walk in with a frown, you’re guaranteed to walk out with a smile.Every concert begins with the following announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s soul time!” So it’s apt that Jones’ quasi-follow-up to her breakthrough 2010 album I Learned the Hard Way takes part of that statement as its title. Soul Time! isn’t a record of new material – it’s a set full of rarities and former download exclusives, and is the very definition of the term “stop gap”. However, the dedicated Sharon Jones fan would have had to be very committed to own everything here: three songs are culled from bonus material found on digital download copies of I Learned the Hard Way, meaning that you would have had to buy the record twice from separate online retailers (and once on vinyl – “When I Come Home” was only available to those who downloaded the MP3s from the label via a drop card lobbed in with the LP) in order to fetch everything encompassing Soul Time!. The thing is this: even though Soul Time! is an odds and sods release, the material is generally top notch, and it leads the excited listener to wonder, if this stuff is considered to be Ms. Jones’ throwaways, or is substance that didn’t find their way to a proper album, has the artist actually recorded anything not intended for one of her discs that would be considered to be an outright dud? Soul Time! is evidence that, even when the singer and her backup band isn’t concentrating on working on cuts that will, pardon the pun, make the cut, they’re still turning out ace material. ...full text |
| Bbc |
| Few acts have created their own universe as successfully as Brooklyn-based Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Forming in 1996, the band’s quest to create bona-fide funk-soul has long outlived their original critics’ view that the 10-piece band was merely some form of extended pastiche. Using only original instruments from the 60s and 70s and recording in glorious analogue, they eschew any post-modern references and create full-on, joyous grooves which achieve their aim of sounding like they were dug up in some dusty old vinyl shop. Having cemented their reputation in the UK as being Mark Ronson’s house band and featuring strongly on Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album, their albums have never quite captured their full force as a live act. Soul Time!, a compilation of singles, B sides and live favourites of the past decade comes pretty close though, and serves as a perfect introduction to the band. Showcasing bandleader Bosco Mann’s soulful writing, Soul Time! scores with its note-perfect emotion and keening brass arrangements. Genuine (Parts 1 and 2), a single in 2004, opens here, complete with its fade and return; it sounds like something from James Brown’s People label, and sets the album’s relentless, upbeat tone. New Shoes, written by guitarist Binky Griptite, is a pounding northern soul-influenced stomper. The 2009 Christmas single, Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects, is the most successful track here and underlines their formula perfectly – taking a beguiling title and subject matter (how a little girl receives Christmas presents in a chimney-less flat) with sensitive, nostalgic arrangements. Co-writer Jones, of course, is the star, and sings of her mother, soulfully conveying her emotion and strength....full text |
| Guardian |
| With every album Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings release, the suspicion increases that the recordings might be superfluous to proceedings: that what really counts with this band is the blistering live show. Soul Time! feels like merchandise-stall fodder: stacks of tracks have been issued before, and even those making their first appearance on disc are far from new – most glaringly Longer and Stronger, written to celebrate Jones's 50th birthday in 2006. Then again, newness is a relative concept for a band trading in funk and soul licks patented decades ago, whose avowed aim is to party like it's 1969. And even if the production job by Dap-Kings' frontman/bassist/chief songwriter Bosco Mann is too pristine, there is a crackle in the band's playing that, in the best songs, fans to a full-scale blaze. There is a filthy energy to the thrusting When I Come Home, while New Shoes bounces along with so much fierce attitude, it hardly matters that the song is an amalgam of cliches....full text |
Sharon Jones and the Dap lyrics
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