As with If All I Was Was Black reviewed here, Staples attaches her wonderful gutsy vocal to wonderful gutsy production, like the dirt gospel-blues of opener Change, and this is followed by a Motown riff-start to Anytime, another blues-infused funk of a song.
On third We Get By,
Staples is joined by Ben Harper, who wrote the songs on this album, in a slowed
soulful take on how to deal with change by enduring – their paired vocals
adding a sonorous depth to the account of strength in perseverance. Next Brothers and Sisters is another funk
number and this too is about change and the need for change – positive change:
the theme embraced in the certainty of something’s got to give and one thinks,
naturally, of a civil rights call to change which has, to a degree, been realised,
but in so many others has simply atrophied to its original baser roots.
Heavy on my Mind
rolls around with the blues of a reverbed guitar foundation – and this is solid
lament about pain and suffering and, yes, another fight. That Staples has such
a sense of perseverance aged 80, and after what she has seen in the nasty past
and the nasty now, is of great credit to her soul, musically and spiritually.
The song Sometime is driven by its verbs
of give and need and cry and pray as well as everybody’s got to change
sometime, so the theme continues. Long may it.
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| Mavis and Ben |
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