Album Review: Tom Jones Praise and Blame

Tom Jones <i>Praise & Blame</i> cover. Photo / Supplied

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Keep your knickers on, Uncle Tom's gone gospel ...

Turning 70 this year perhaps made Tom Jones figure it was high time to stop his increasingly strained efforts to sound relevant as he had done in albums of his past 20 years, usually involving hip-hop and dance producers or young duet partners.

He was already on the way on his 2004 swing and R&B set with Jools Holland and his band. It had its moments. But Praise and Blame is far better. Here the big man revels in a set of gospel, blues, country and early rock 'n' roll songs.

With its backing by a back-to-basics producer, the album might be seen as Jones' own take on Johnny Cash's valedictory American Recordings albums with Rick Rubin. But Las Vegas' favourite Welshman sure doesn't sound like he's signing off just yet.

He's certainly doing his best to exorcise his camp Sex Bomb persona while getting in touch with the man upstairs - and rather touchingly too on the likes of blues guitar pioneer Jessie Mae Hemphill's Lord Help The Poor and Needy.

Producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Crowded House) neatly frames the voice of the born-again soulman in a set of punchy less-is-more arrangements. That's whether it's rumbling through a funereal take on Dylan's What Good Am I? at the beginning or doing White Stripes things to John Lee Hooker's Burning Hell.

Elsewhere, the 11 tracks offer a mix of rock 'n' gospel (Didn't It Rain), stomping R&B (Strange Things) and end with a reworking of Run On, the spiritual sampled into a hit by Moby in 1999 but which Jones manages to make sound like a personal testament to his own bad old days.

Yes it might have a spiritual bent to it, but Praise and Blame is album of earthy delights.

It's also an album that may convert a few longtime Jones' non-believers too.

- NZ Herald / TimeOut