Well-Executed Album Gritty, Not Pretty

By Bill Eichenberger, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

May 13–’HYMN FOR MY SOUL’ JOE COCKER: So what if Cocker can’t carry a tune in a bucket? The man has soul and some pretty refined taste in music, too.

His latest release is a Southern thing, including covers of songs by New Orleans stalwarts the Subdudes (One Word: Peace) and the Meters (Love Is for Me), and Muscle Shoals soul man Dan Penn (Don’t Give Up on Me).

Cocker hangs here with the best sidemen in soul (or any other type of music): Bob Babbitt (bass), Ethan Johns (guitar), Jim Keltner (drums) and Benmont Tench (piano).

The musicians provide sweetness and sophistication, and Cocker proves that the journey to the heart of a soul song doesn’t necessarily require a pretty voice.

— Bill Eichenberger beichenberger@dispatch.com

‘WARCHILD’ EMMANUEL JAL: At 7, Jal was forced to become a soldier in Sudan’s civil war — a tragedy that the rapper recounts on Forced To Sin, from his new album.

Warchild, with 13 tracks, is musically diverse and polyrhythmic; the rapping, direct; and the vocabulary, plain.

Reggae beats are common, and it comes as no surprise that the politically charged rapper covers Jimmy Cliff’s Many Rivers To Cross. Although rap is Jal’s chosen medium, the song is beautifully sung — suggesting that the former child soldier could just as easily be a crooner as a hip-hopper.

— B.E.

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Copyright (c) 2008, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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