|
 |
Various ArtistsSoul Gospel Soul Jazz/Inertia While the blues deals with the side of soul music that's stricken with defeat, gospel announces immutable victory. Even something as sadly slinky as Clarence Smith's Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child makes that experience sound like a state to transcend and be transformed by. Gospel dares you to disbelieve in the Almighty. Here we are attuned to something which makes no sense except in the feeling of it. New York Lightning by Voices Of East Harlem has a brooding build to it that's undeniable; try and understand it though and it proves as inexplicable as it is exhilarating. This abstraction seems particularly pertinent because, although many of the artists featured on 'Soul Gospel' are clearly showing their roots in the church, there's hardly a hymnal to be found here. Seminal folk artist Odetta turns in a moody Pastures Of Plenty, taking the listener back to the slave spirituals sung in the field only to leave them blind-sided by Kim Weston's high-strung wailing Eleanor Rigby. The spiritual power and concern of gospel music is here brought to bear on everyday vexations like urban survival (Della Reese's Compared To What ?) and dealing with a no-good man (Lee Cross by Aretha Franklin). In a day and age where the average popular song announces its intent in the opening ten seconds and presents that unvaryingly for four minutes, there's much to be said for the epic drama ingrained in many of these arrangements which build from diffident to astonishing so smoothly you can't help but be swept away. God is in the grooves.  |
|
The latest issue available now!     |
All content copyright dB Magazine