Smooth like butta

MUSIC CITY SOUL ~ Beverley Knight

I showed up a lil late to the Beverley party, her 3rd album being my first foray into the whole Knight experience. I picked up her first two for completist sake, but I’ve yet to warm to them. Most people have criticised her for getting more and more commercial with each album (maybe that’s why I like them!), but no one can accuse of her of that with her latest cut “Music City Soul”, which I feel is her best work to date.

Knights previous albums have shown her intent to contemporise the typical R&B sound (I’ve always found the British R&B scene to be far more musically adventurous than its more commercial US counterpart). But with “Music City Soul”, she’s decided to go back to where it all began and has made an album flavoured with the old time rhythm and blues of the american south. It’s the album she was born to record and shows a whole new side to the Brit diva.

Everything from the production of the tracks right down to the design of the album sleeve is a throwback to a bygone soul era. The feel of the album is so relaxed you’d swear that it was nothing more than a live jamming session that had accidentally been recorded.

It’s a uniformly strong disc, but I think Beverly is at her best when she’s going all out on a rollicking up-tempo number and the energy she infuses into these is nothing short of infectious. I can thoroughly recommend Music City Soul to anyone who fancies themselves a connoisseur of soul.

Standout Tracks:

• Every Time You See Me Smile
• Aint That A Lot Of Love
• No Mans Land
• The Queen of Starting Over
• Black Butta
• Why Me, Why You, Why Now
• Tell Me I’m Wrong
• Back To You