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The Boston Globe Reviews PRAISE & BLAME
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Tom Jones, 'Praise & Blame'
July 26, 2010
Rick Rubin did it for Neil Diamond. Jack White did it for Loretta Lynn. And now producer Ethan Johns hopes to get people to take notice of Tom Jones in a new-yet-old way in the autumn of the Welsh belter’s career. There is nothing cheeky or winking about this dark and sometimes gripping collection of gospel/spiritual songs. Instead it’s a full bore, strip-to-the-skeleton work from a historic artist dropping all artifice and digging into music he loves. While hints of ham and cheese pop up on occasion, Jones plays it straight. He convincingly searches his soul on Bob Dylan’s “What Good Am I?’’ over a spare beat and murky bed of sound that conjures the arid wooziness of “Raising Sand’’; “Lord Help’’ is a sweltering, swampy shuffle given a great assist from Booker T. Jones on organ. Though his robust voice sounds far from weary here, his 70 years have made Jones mindful of what lies ahead, and nowhere is that more evident than on a barn-burning take of John Lee Hooker’s “Burning Hell.’’ Avoiding genre clichés like choirs and syrupy strings, Jones burrows into a foot-stomping-at-the juke-joint rootsiness that puts the focus on his measured ruminations. “Praise & Blame’’ may not inspire much panty-hurling but it might cause open-minded music fans to reappraise Jones’s interpretive gifts. (Out tomorrow) SARAH RODMAN
ESSENTIAL “Burning Hell’’
