Joss Stone, The Soul Sessions Review

Overall Rating

A record by a singer who needs no artificial assistance and who uses real live human beings to provide the backing.

Confuses anguish with soul. Doesn't pose nearly naked on the cover (OK, that last one was a joke...).

Joss Stone, The Soul Sessions: It's interesting to note that one single episode of the BBC's 'Junior Stars in Their Eyes' has spawned a more succesfull music career than all the Stars/Idols shows put together. In general I regard this as A Good Thing, but in Joss Stone's case I see one small problem. She groans soulfully through her records because that's what the singers on the records that her parents made her listen to did, rather than because she feels it.

This is OK to a point. I'm sure a lot of the teenagers of the 50's and 60's whose footsteps Joss is stepping in didn't really have all that bottled up anguish inside them either, but they didn't really overegg the pudding in the way that Joss does on the closing track, 'For the love of you'.

I know that when this album first came out it took everyone by storm, and I read a lot of nice things about it, even from some died in the wool 60's/70's soul freaks that I am aquainted with, but I can't help feeling that a slight revaluation is now in order. Joss Stone isn't Aretha Franklin or Dusty Sprinfield just yet, but she is loaded with talent and potential, and if she can avoid the twin career killers of taking her clothes off to publicise her songs and mixing with a select few who don't know quite as much about music as they think, then she has a long career in front of her.

This album will then be regarded quite rightly as one of the best 1st albums of its generation, but let's be honest, the killer track is the summer-fun favourite 'Super-duper love', and aside from that... Well the more uptempo the track, the better the relisten value. The slower tracks are, quite frankly, better avoided.