Joss Stone - The Soul Sessions Vol 2 Review

Stone's sixth album is a counterpart to her first – 2003's multi-platinum debut of 60s and 70s covers on which the then 16-year-old sagely aligned herself with old-timer luminaries such as Betty Wright and Benny Latimore. This time, round Muscle Shoals cred comes from Clayton Ivey and it's the 70s and 80s that have been mined. Less predictable is a bombastic cover of Broken Bells' leisurely hit The High Road and though her mighty voice is technically irreproachable throughout, every track is attacked with all the timidity of a tsunami – enough to prompt the peevish complaint that force and feeling are not the same thing....full text Joss Stone's 2003 debut, The Soul Sessions, made her an international star and multimillionaire at the age of 16. Almost a decade on, having spent almost all of her fortune buying herself out of her record contract, and having being victim of an attempted kidnap, she is older and presumably wiser. She's certainly returned to her debut's soul covers format in more mature and superb voice. Stone has always been a tremendous shouter, but has acquired a vulnerability and ability to truly inhabit emotional songs such as Eddie Floyd's I Don't Want to Be With Nobody But You and the Dells' The Love We Had (Stays on My Mind). More surprisingly, Broken Bells' 2010 hit The High Road is given a startling, spirited remodel. Presumably now with the freedom to record whatever she wants, songs from the likes of the Chi-Lites and Womack & Womack suggest an aficionado of soul. After some so-so self-penned albums, Stone could use some original material anything like as good, but this is a powerful, heartfelt and classy comeback....full text A "revisitation" of the idea which launched Stone into the crossover jetstream: ballsy, mannered reconstructions of what the word "soul" might once have stood for.

Here she is doing it again with top-notch players in Nashville, including Delbert McClinton and Ernie Isley. It's high-class karaoke, covering the Chi-Lites, Dorothy Moore, The Dells, Womack & Womack. Girl's got taste. And, as ever, she convinces most at the blowtorch end of her range....full text