Album review: Mavis Staples, 'You Are Not Alone'
3.5 stars (out of 4)
With a series of fine albums and stirring live performances, Mavis Staples is enjoying one of the great late-career renaissances of recent times. Her 2007 album, “We’ll Never Turn Back,” reconnected with her storied past, as it updated the freedom-march songs that she sang with the Staple Singers at the height of the civil rights movement. With “You Are Not Alone” (Anti), Staples brings that spirit forward with a mix of gospel standards and newer songs, including two written specifically for her by producer Jeff Tweedy.
The Wilco songwriter astutely put Staples in the studio with her current road band, which came on board after “We’ll Never Turn Back” was recorded: guitarist Rick Holmstrom, bassist Jeff Turmes and drummer Stephen Hodges. They let the arrangements simmer and give Staples plenty of space to move; Holmstrom inserts terse commentary with his precision guitar fills and the rhythm section swings just behind the beat in the fashion of the Muscle Shoals, Ala., pros who backed the Staple Singers on their greatest recordings.
She sounds at home in this space, digging into the funky hosannas of Rev. Gary Davis’ “I Belong to the Band” and her late father Pops Staples’ “You Don’t Knock.” Heat shimmers off the surface of “I’m on My Way to Heaven,” determination busts through the bluesy seams of “We’re Gonna Make It.” The a cappella “Wonderful Savior” brings Staples back not only to her days in the church choir, but to her parents’ Chicago living room, where she learned to sing harmony with her siblings.
These restatements of strength would be enough to qualify “You Are Not Alone” as a fine album, a solid introduction to what has made Staples an American musical cornerstone since the ‘50s. But the real ear-openers are a renewed appreciation of Staples as a ballad singer, one who doesn’t have to shout to make an impact. In Randy Newman’s “Losing You,” accompanied by a lone guitar, she uses the full range of her vocal gifts, from a rumble to a sweetly despairing cry. And Tweedy’s folk-soul title track sums up what Staples has always been about: a voice of reassurance in troubled times.
greg@gregkot.com
With a series of fine albums and stirring live performances, Mavis Staples is enjoying one of the great late-career renaissances of recent times. Her 2007 album, “We’ll Never Turn Back,” reconnected with her storied past, as it updated the freedom-march songs that she sang with the Staple Singers at the height of the civil rights movement. With “You Are Not Alone” (Anti), Staples brings that spirit forward with a mix of gospel standards and newer songs, including two written specifically for her by producer Jeff Tweedy.
The Wilco songwriter astutely put Staples in the studio with her current road band, which came on board after “We’ll Never Turn Back” was recorded: guitarist Rick Holmstrom, bassist Jeff Turmes and drummer Stephen Hodges. They let the arrangements simmer and give Staples plenty of space to move; Holmstrom inserts terse commentary with his precision guitar fills and the rhythm section swings just behind the beat in the fashion of the Muscle Shoals, Ala., pros who backed the Staple Singers on their greatest recordings.
She sounds at home in this space, digging into the funky hosannas of Rev. Gary Davis’ “I Belong to the Band” and her late father Pops Staples’ “You Don’t Knock.” Heat shimmers off the surface of “I’m on My Way to Heaven,” determination busts through the bluesy seams of “We’re Gonna Make It.” The a cappella “Wonderful Savior” brings Staples back not only to her days in the church choir, but to her parents’ Chicago living room, where she learned to sing harmony with her siblings.
These restatements of strength would be enough to qualify “You Are Not Alone” as a fine album, a solid introduction to what has made Staples an American musical cornerstone since the ‘50s. But the real ear-openers are a renewed appreciation of Staples as a ballad singer, one who doesn’t have to shout to make an impact. In Randy Newman’s “Losing You,” accompanied by a lone guitar, she uses the full range of her vocal gifts, from a rumble to a sweetly despairing cry. And Tweedy’s folk-soul title track sums up what Staples has always been about: a voice of reassurance in troubled times.
greg@gregkot.com