In just six short years, Joss Stone has run through an accelerated career arc that has been both blessed and cursed with a trail of the highest peaks and the deepest valleys. The differences in reception for albums like The Soul Sessions, Mind, Body & Soul and Introducing Joss Stone is just staggering – Stone has been the next big thing and regarded as creatively down and out – and remarkable given that it was taken it has taken other singers decades to navigate through similar conversations. In 2003, for example, Stone appeared with the biggest of big bangs and did it on the strength of a covers album. Conversely, Introducing Joss Stone (which appeared in 2007) breezed through with only tepid interest at best and abject dismissal at worst – a reception that, particularly in the pop idiom, is often regarded as the kiss of death. It has, needless to say, been a wild ride for Joss Stone so far and, judging by the tenor that Color Me Free takes from the very opening of “Feel Me,” it didn't agree with the singer at all. Stone has gracefully gone back to basics for her fourth album to see if the shoes still fit and if the steps still dance.
They do. Colour Me Free is a rousing return for Joss Stone to the Motown and Uptown heights she first tested on The Soul Sessions but, this time, she's not playing catbird to a bunch of other singers; outside of one classic Ray Charles song, these twelve tracks are all originals – most of which were both written and at least co-produced by Stone herself.
…And from note one, it can only be said that the magic has not faded in Stone's stylistic absence. In “Free Me” as well as “Could Have Been You,” “Big Ol' Game,” “You Got The Love” and “I Believe It To My Soul,” the singer hangs deep in the pocket of a hip hop-touched Soul groove and hangs tight to the back end; making listeners ache to hear that older-than-her-years sigh. There are no missteps in the singer's methodical walk through these dozen tracks, each is a solid, swaggering and soulful memory. That doesn't mean that Joss Stone is overtly trying to reclaim the soul that she started with at the beginning of her career – that would imply that it's an effort made. No, that soul singer has simply always been Joss Stone and any alterations to the sound were the forced issues; on Colour Me Free, Stone sounds more comfortable and natural in her effortless delivery of these songs. They come as naturally as a heartbeat.
Artist:
www.jossstone.com/
www.myspace.com/jossstone
Album:
Colour Me Free! is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
