Living on Mercy

[Some songs] are new, some of which were handed out to other musicians over the years. When collected on Living on Mercy -- and delivered by a crew of empathetic old pros -- they feel of a piece, a sweet, soulful, and reflective effort from a masterful singer/songwriter that benefits from its mellowness and slow, assured gait.

Some selections could have been edited to make this a shorter, stronger collection, especially since the smooth, unruffled mid-tempo groove gets a little stale by the album’s final third. But it’s a pleasure to have Penn back on the music scene he is so inextricably tied to, writing and cutting fresh tracks with the same attention to detail and overall mojo he applied to the timeless gems that made him such an iconic name in American soul music.

It’s clearly a different time now in so many ways that it’s unlikely that any of these tunes, which are as good as any he’s penned (can’t help using that term), will become mega hits. Nonetheless, these songs are a salve for these times and do plenty of justice to Penn’s legendary status.

Living On Mercy finds the songsmith at his sweetest and breeziest. [Oct 2020, p.85]