Black Velvet

The result is naturally a bit of a mish-mash, but all of the material is terrific and the sequencing makes this seem like a finished product.

It's a groove from beginning to end, and much like Bradley's musical career, Black Velvet doesn't fail to appeal to listeners both young and old. His talent and spirit will be sorely missed.

No posthumous album can be heard without a sense of loss and absence. No matter how much you enjoy these tracks, you must also acknowledge as you listen that the world will go on without this singular talent.

It showcases Bradley’s strongest talents, and is just as good as any of the records he released when he was alive.

The fourth and last is less than 40 minutes long yet stands tall as a significant addition to his oeuvre.

[Posthumous albums] run the risk of being hobbled packs of demos and half-finished ideas. But with the right guidance, they can also be effective final chapters of a career. This 10-track collection of rarities, arranged by Bradley’s friends at soul-revivalist labels Dunham/Daptone Records, proves to be the latter, with the love and passion Bradley exuded in life fully preserved and present.

Tracks like the funky "Can't Fight the Feeling," "Love Jones" and "I Feel a Change" aren't '60s soul throwbacks so much as they are genuine articles, with the now-trademark Daptone sound feeling fresh and vintage at once.

Although comprised of offcuts, it amounts to a great fourth and final record. [Dec 2018, p.104]

The most heart-wrenching selection are a ravaged take on Nirvana's "Stay Away" in which Bradley intuitively taps into Kurt Cobain's roiling anguish, a tonsil-shredding full-band rendition of "Victim Of Love" and the instrumental "Black Velvet," which Brenneck had earmarked for a Bradley vocal he was too weak to sing. [Dec 2018, p.23]

Even as Black Velvet occasionally fails to gel as a cohesive album--it is, after all, essentially a B-sides collection--it succeeds as a tribute to an authentic talent.

Even if it frontloads the strongest and newest material, Black Velvet provides a largely engaging second side. The one exception being his cover of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” originally released as a single in 2011, which feels somehow more gimmicky than the (solid, even if it highlights how cloying Cobain’s lyrics could be) Nirvana cover preceding it.

Black Velvet is a collection of odds and ends and not a proper album, and sometimes it sounds that way as it moves from track to track. But it is full of the heart, soul, and spirit that Charles Bradley summoned every time he stood before a microphone, and this is a moving reminder of how much he gave us, and how much we have lost.

The Black Velvet LP features a collection of unreleased gems ("Can't Fight the Feeling," "Fly Little Girl"), covers (Nirvana's "Stay Away," Neil Young's "Heart of Gold"), choice rarities ("Luv Jones"), and alternate takes ("Victim of Love").

They’re crafted artifacts that never quite captured his live charisma. Still, his weathered, yearning voice provided a focal point for Brenneck’s retro fantasias and helped freshen them. If anything, this farewell helps preserve the singer’s charms by illustrating how his revivalism wasn’t pure.