(Click on the label to listen to the song)

They don’t make music like this anymore. You immediately make that distinction by the time the first verse kicks in. It takes a man who is on his 43rd year as a vocalist to grasp the depth and force of soul music that Lee Fields can. However, Fields most relevant period may not be when you think. Don’t look back to the ‘70s to find Field’s golden period. The ‘90s was when he was churning out important soul-shaking music with Let’s Get A Groove On being the apex.

So it’s not surprising that a little over a decade later, he is still showing up any young Soul and R&B artist with the song “You’re The Kind Of Girl.” With the ease of Field’s voice, he sculpts a painstakingly gorgeous tune that is filled with depth and clarity. It’s everything you come to expect in classic Soul. With just the right amount of horns and just the right amount of push, you can listen to it over and over and be equally marveled by the quality of this song.

A teaser to a new album in March, Fields will be releasing A Faithful Man on Truth & Soul Records. If this song is any inclination, don’t expect Fields to slow down anytime soon because if I have a feeling, the golden age is still shining bright.

Link: Truth and Soul Records artist Lee Fields

Link: http://thecharlesbradley.com/

Charles Bradley finally made it. At the age of 62, and many years doing his James Brown routine under the pseudonym Black Velvet, he finally made one of his dreams come true — to be recognized.

No Time For Dreaming is 35 years too late. This album should have been nudged up with the Northern and Southern Soul of the mid-’70s. It is a blessing in disguise that it is not because not only does this album stick out like a sore thumb, but it also exemplifies the spirit of the true soul brother and a continued preservation to the foundation of the movement.

The sound comes from the streets and the words come from the heart. You have to live it to sing it and Bradley has the proof.

That makes “The World (Is Going Up In Flames)” the testament. That gritty sound recording, the emotion exploding from Bradley’s soul, the horns wailing out with reverberating expression. A working man’s man in a one easy piece; one look at the expression on his face, and you feel it in your gut.

“Golden Rule” is pure timeless love while “Trouble In The Land” is fueled by a breakbeat that pounds at the heart of the city. A little more modern for the album’s flavor, where Bradley works best when he’s mixing up a little blues and a little jazz into an exorcism of emotion with “How Long.”

No Time For Dreaming may be more Soul On Top than The Payback, but what it comes down to is that this man deserves the love because he’s worked for it, and it shows.

*Charles Bradley will be performing in Bloomington, Indiana at The Bluebird on April 22.*

Links:
Viva’s Homepage: http://www.vivamusic.info/live/
Viva on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/vivadeconcini

Viva DeConcini and her back up band released Rock & Roll Lover in mid-July.

Rock & Roll Lover is good, girl-fronted, girly-centric fun rock and roll. Many tasty ingredients make their way into this gumbo of a record.  The title track is a bouncy, funky, danceable song that should appeal to the rockabilly kids in the crowd, as should “Go-Go Boots,” and her instrumental cover of Carole King’s/ Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman.”

DeConcini’s vocals are skilled and show a plethora of influences. She goes from fun and flirty to slow and serious in the span of the record. Her voice seems better suited for the upbeat tracks more than the solemn track “Emily.”

The strings are mainly well-crafted blues and rock guitar with some late 60s Brit-psyche.  Nothing about the bass and drums stand out too much; the focus stays on Viva’s voice, the guitars and horns. Horns? Yes! Viva employed the services of a full horn section in this her release, and apparently takes a 4-piece with her on tour.

Rock and Roll Lover is over all a good record, a solid record.  It is not, however, a fascinating listen. I have always had the opinion that when a musical outfit plays a little bit of everything on a single record (for this record, it would be a psychedelic rock song, a few upbeat rockabilly-new swing songs, and an instrumental Motown cover, etc), they prove themselves to be a great studio band. They do not prove themselves to be a good independent band with their own sound.

Where the band may lack in a sound that they own, they make up for in playing decent songs. Overall, Rock & Roll Lover is a fun record to relax to and have as background music, or to see at a festival or show; not a band to make a point of seeing based on the contents of this record alone.

RIYL: Stray Cats, Motown records, Ani DiFranco, any alternative-Grrrl music, David Bowie, neo swing music.

Link: http://www.ulachi.com/

Not since the days when Arrested Development sang about Tennessee and built a bridge of hope in a hard-stricken part of America have we heard such positivity in music. Lachi’s words make a difference without sacrificing the sense of realism in her lyrics. And unlike most pop artists on the radio singing about ridiculous and unnecessary babble, her sociopolitical and human nature make a difference through song while keeping her feet on the ground. Despite what is on the surface on the song “We Can Fly,” she sings, “There’s nothing we can’t do.”

We hear about this all the time. The people who should be bitter and angry about life only make themselves stronger and more perseverant. And by doing that, it gives us sobering inspiration. Not only legally blind but also supported by blind musicians, she worries more about how to give love than to revel in life’s pain.

Lachi focuses on fixing things and looking for solutions. We hear it in “Ugly Beautiful” and her views on the expectations of the physical image. It might be easy for someone who cannot see a face, but Lachi can dig deeper into your soul, and with that her viewpoints becomes even more important to take note.

Not all songs contain the same immediacy and not all songs are going to knock you over the head, but this is as good as anything heard on the radio today. Whether you take that as a good thing or a bad one, I would rather hear a song or two of this than 99% of the meaningless sludge that’s being churned out in today’s pop world.

Meshell Ndegeocello is looking deeper within these days and taking a more introspective approach to her songwriting on Devil’s Halo. Since 1993, Ndegeocello has been churning out objective compositions, trading back and forth silky pop grooves with R&B soulfullness and making her the lover just as much as the fighter.

From the beginning, she plays a tug of war between edgy pounding rock and nighttime smoothness as her voice begs, “Be my lover,” on the song “Slaughter.” Trade Cowboy Junkies moonlit serenades into an R&B candlelit montage and you have “Tie One On.”

Ndegeocello pursues the concept of love or the lack thereof. She takes the same philosophy that Morrissey did with The Smiths and with songs like “Lola” and “Mass Transit” to explore the complications of love as she peruses the real meat of this album: “At the end of the day, nobody wants to be alone.”

Not to downplay the songs that make her who she is and the ethereal R&B goodness like “Love You Down” and “Hair of the Dog.” It is these songs that really make you want to sit back, close your eyes and just let the Trip Hop beats and Ndegeocello’s voice take you away.

What this does is give us a real person and a reminder that with a career that spans two decades so far, there has never been anything fake to Ndegeocello.

Origin: Los Angeles, California
Style: R&B

In a time when music was just as important as the films they represented, Willie Hutch was at the top of his game at the beginning of his game. Next to the Shaft theme song, “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out” is recognized as one of the top funk songs in a blaxploitation film. In the late ‘90s, The Chemical Brothers gave the song a mixed up resurrection on the DJ album of the same title, which stemmed from a BBC Radio 1 performance called “The Anti-Nazi Mix.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_1_Anti-Nazi_Mix)

Thanks to the band Sisters Love, who made a cameo in the film — they are the all female soul act at the “Playas Convention” — their manager suggested that Willie Hutch score the film. Hutch had some experience with Motown from the release Fully Exposed, but he had never composed a soundtrack before.

So Hutch gathered an extensive cast of band members, an eight-piece horn section and a massive string section. From the beginning jive sound of “Vampin,” you know this is not an ordinary soundtrack. Influenced by Quincy Jones, Hutch uses a more orchestrated approach to the music than straight up funk.

For example “Theme of the Mack” is a beautiful piece of soul with a sax solo that heats up like a fireplace and a guitar that flickers like candlelight.

Without the film, you may not realize that “Mack’s Stroll” captures the essence of ghetto life and a battle between good and evil, the pusher and pimp with liberation. But “The Getaway (Chase Scene)” is perfectly clear (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAo9nlBzYJY).

Despite obvious song correlations with the film, “Slick” is Richard Pryor’s (Slick is his character name) theme song to the film, the joy of this release is that you do not need the movie to get down with this soundtrack. It’s more like the movie needs the soundtrack to exist.

And by the end of it all, as the credits begin to roll, the moment has arrived, and the tom thumping intro of “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out” begins. It’s quite clever to make the outro theme to the film different from the intro. And not another song from the album has made such a higher impression as this song.

Cross-Reference: Quincy Jones, Sisters Love, Curtis Mayfield