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Artist:
Joss Stone
Album
Title: The Soul Sessions
Label:
S-Curve/Virgin
Bones:
Summary:
Classic soul and R&B, it's good for what ails ya!
Reviewed
By: David Gillespie
Exploding onto radio waves with a re-telling of The White Stripes' Fell In Love With a Girl, Joss Stone and company took a punk rock stomp through a disdainfully recorded song and turned it into a track that oozed sex and a casual awareness of all things adult. A tremendous accomplishment considering the owner of the voice is a 16 year-old white girl from Britain.
Now more than ever, race is having less and less to do with the genre of music a person finds themselves in. That may seem a fairly grand statement to make in regards to what is essentially a bluesy-pop record, but it's an encouraging trend none the less.
Utopian readings aside, let's get back to the music. Joss Stone has arrived at the perfect time and created the perfect album, at least in terms of what she could have wanted to accomplish by releasing a recording entitled The Soul Sessions. The maturity displayed in her voice is breath taking some of the time, and convincing 100% of the time. Nothing here suggests a record company saw an opening in the market and rushed this out, and if that was the case then I'm quite happy to be taken for a ride.
While the album is garnering attention due to the aforementioned White Stripes' cover alongside second single Super Duper Love, where it really shines are the quieter, more reflective tracks. Here Stone's voice is allowed room to breathe, moving from whisper to impassioned cry in the smallest of steps. Even on tracks made famous by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Stone manages to hold her own, showing equal parts talent and big, shiny brass balls.
The only track on the album that sways into run of the mill territory is the version of Some Kind of Wonderful. Here the vocals are not what let it down, but the instrumentation in the background which is kept far too understated to match Stone's singing.
All in all a fine debut. The only question now is whether the public will be receptive to a second release only just around the corner, or if some gimmickry will reveal itself underneath the machine. Either way, the album should be judged on its own merits and not on extenuating circumstances; and in that light Joss Stone has created a minor classic and deserves to be recognised for it.
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