In many ways soul music is the fancy car of popular twentieth century music. The glistening, sliding lead guitar licks and offbeat rhythm guitar chops are its chrome hubcaps, the blasts of brass are the big beaming headlights, the electric pianos and wurlitzers are like its beautifully upholstered interior, and the rolling, riffing and thundering bass and drum sounds are its pimptastically durable suspension system.
In order to justify driving a sonic vehicle of such awesomeness (without seeming like you’re having a midlife crisis), you need to have a particular type of voice – an upstanding, brash voice that wears sequins and bright red lipstick and a feather boa and stands in a perpetual spotlight. In contrast, I’ve always visualised Sheryl Crow’s softer, hoarser voice wearing plaid shirts and dungarees and leaning back on a hay-bale. So I’m sorry to say, that despite the love and care Crow has employed producing and crafting this soul limousine of a record, her voice still sounds like its more suited to the charmingly ramshackle and laidback jalopy that is country-tinged rock.
Crow’s voice works best when it’s allowed to blend with the arrangements that surround it, and here she’s required to fight for space amongst a battery of assertive soul sounds. Towards the end of the record, proceedings get less brash and she doesn’t have to fight so much (like on the smoother piano led ballad ‘Sideways’, the groovier rootsy title track, and the organtastic ‘Roses and Moonlight’). Here the effect is lovely, but elsewhere the strain shows.
Key Tracks: ‘Sideways’