- Record Label: Anti-
- Release Date: May 25, 2010
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Sometimes torchy and always gut-wrenching, her knowing rasp pushes the album onto terra firma between the blues and power pop.
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As promised, the disc is a journey through vintage British rock, but her simmering, brooding John cover shows just how freely she’s chosen to adapt some of the most famous songs in the pop canon. That liberty is well taken.
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Divine intervention aside, it's a matter of the unparalleled depth of LaVette's interpretive skill that she can take a covers album and make it sound like a collection of originals.
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She uses every scrape, shout and break in her raspy voice, with a predator’s sense of timing, to seize the drama of a song.
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Now in her mid-sixties, LaVette is singing better than ever, and if she isn’t a household name, she ought to be. This is a remarkable album because this lady is a remarkable singer.
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She occasionally indulges in vocal gymnastics just because she can, but LaVette’s voice revitalizes transcendent lyrics that many of today’s top female singers wouldn’t be able to handle.
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Yet if the title is straightforward, the music often isn’t, with LaVette teasing out new emotional details from songs that seemed to have given up all their secrets decades ago.
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It's hard not to appreciate the karma of some of the most well-worn rock standards of LaVette's hard-fought early years rendered new again through a voice time almost forgot.
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There are flat parts when the band takes shelter in its mid-tempo comfort zone, and not every song is a triumph. But each one feels personal and full of intention.