Etta James: Let's Roll

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * *)

Well, it couldn't be any worse than Neil Young's identically titled album, right? But here the queen of ballsy blues nods only to September 11 in the title (which also references her first hit Roll With Me Henry), then promptly gets down to her big-voiced business which, this time, is in going back to her roots in rock'n'soul r'n'b.

She kicks things off with Somebody to Love, which rides over choppy, Keith Richards-styled riffs, but regrettably she doesn't bring out the rawness the song deserves and you immediately wonder if James, now in her 60s, isn't letting the youthful band and the material walk the walk for her.

It was an accusation made of her last album, Matriarch of the Blues, and you get that sense rather too often here (the ordinary or musically cliched: Leap of Faith; Trust Yourself; more Stones-rock on Old Weakness). But at other times the lady redeems all: the earthy Lie No Better, the Tina Turner/swamp-rocker Strongest Weakness which sounds like a bar-room pleaser, the world-weary A Change is Gonna Do Me Good, and particularly the brooding Wayward Saints of Memphis.

So, uneven, but a whole lot better than that Young album.

Label: BMG