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Artist: Candi Staton
Label: Honest Jons
Length: 11 tracks / 44:04
While dance floor anthems like "U Got the Love" and "Young Hearts Run Free" are what Staton is known for, this more mellow, soulful tour-de-force is the sort of disc that sets her well above the competition.
She mixes her tough life experience with a thorough grounding in Gospel to bring out the raw emotional power in these songs using plenty of understatement and the most subtle vocal nuances.
This is her first secular label release for many years, yet the title track contrasts abuse at the hands of a violent lover with the healing from God's hands. The song could be autobiographical, like several in this collection, which is so charged that it doesn't so much drip with emotion as swim in it.
Staton mixes up her genres beautifully. Several tracks, which include Merle Haggard's excellent "You Don't Have Far To Go" and her own fine "It's Not Easy Letting Go," have pedal steel teasing out the country and stabbing horns giving it soul, while Staton's growling whisper oozes the blues.
The particular appeal is the classic soul feel that comes as second nature to a woman who recorded most of her early hits with the legendary Muscle Shoals house band (who backed artists like Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett) and still has its Barry Beckett playing B3.
So forget the singles – this is something else entirely: fabulous songs, consummately played, brilliantly sung.
Derek Walker
