DIVINE BROWN
Divine Brown (Universal)
Reviewed by John Sekerka

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Soul is dead. Nobody is making relevant soul with any sort of shelf life, and thus nobody is listening to contemporary soul past the hype half life. Divine Brown tries mighty hard to shake the trend. She has the voice, the feel and most importantly, the image of a new soul queen. And she gets off to a great start, showing off a multi octave range, cool delivery, and some much appreciated sass. Then she tries to rework Joni Mitchell's "Help Me." Bad idear. It's an obvious attention grab that despite being a nice jazzy version, doesn't add anything to the original, and stilts the pace of the record. There is a definite spark in this diva, and the original numbers show enough promise that there may be some soul saving down the road, especially in light of the atrocious sap flowing these days that passes for that sorry genre.

© 2005 - John Sekerka