{"id":31957,"date":"2026-07-18T05:45:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T09:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=31957"},"modified":"2026-07-16T09:19:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T13:19:20","slug":"album-review-t-staggs-southern-soul-era-vol-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/18\/album-review-t-staggs-southern-soul-era-vol-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: T Staggs \u2013 Southern Soul Era, Vol. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-31960\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/t_staggs.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/t_staggs.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/t_staggs-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/t_staggs-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Sweet soul is a subgenre that\u2019s been with us for awhile now. Built on the foundation of \u201860s soul of the Stax and Motown varieties, these days it\u2019s often infused with some more contemporary characteristics that connect it to slow-jam r&amp;b of the 1980s and beyond. But at its core, sweet soul is a vehicle for songs about live and its travails. Spartanburg, South Carolina\u2019s T Staggs understand the form and showcases that knowledge on <i>Southern Soul Era, Vol. 2<\/i>. Yes, there are nods to modernity (like his reliance on Vocoder treatments) but they\u2019re not criminally overused. Songs like \u201cMiss Those Days\u201d make use of the tried-and-true spoken into approach, but they\u2019re in service of the songs, so all is ok.<\/p>\n<p>Staggs seems to be writing from an autobiographical perspective on many of these tunes, and that gives the proceedings an organic feel that helps offset the band-in-a-box texture that forms the foundation of much of the record. But then there\u2019s the wonderfully real feel of \u201cHey Hater,\u201d suffused with sublime gospel harmonies and a stately beat that envelops the listener. And \u2013 even with the vocal processing \u2013 Staggs demonstrates his vocal prowess on deeply layered tracks like \u201cPop My Ishhh.\u201d And his sentimental side \u2013 never far from the surface) comes to the fore on the album closer \u201cStill Here,\u201d dedicated to his father. Nice stuff, and more evidence that sweet soul is very much still alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sweet soul is a subgenre that\u2019s been with us for awhile now. Built on the foundation of \u201860s soul of the Stax and Motown varieties, these days it\u2019s often infused [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,65,69],"tags":[6000],"class_list":["post-31957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-review","category-soul","tag-t-staggs","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31965,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31957\/revisions\/31965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}