{"id":9328,"date":"2009-04-02T18:06:54","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T18:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=9328"},"modified":"2015-10-23T18:08:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T18:08:04","slug":"album-review-james-morrison-undiscovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/04\/02\/album-review-james-morrison-undiscovered\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: James Morrison — Undiscovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"james_morrison\"<\/p>\n

Beware, dear reader, any review that contains phrases such as “the best [fill in the blank: vocalist, guitarist etc.] since [fill in the blank: name of critically revered artist].” Too often, critics and music journalists fall victim to the hype. After all, we’re human too, despite what a subject of a critical drubbing might claim.<\/p>\n

With that caveat safely out of the way, here goes: James Morrison is one of the greatest blue-eyed soul vocalists since Steve Winwood.<\/p>\n

The vocalist’s publicity machine rightly touts his genuine street cred and dues-paying, and repeatedly drops the name Otis Redding. Yet Morrison’s smooth-yet-sandpapery voice bears more similarities in texture to a young Rod Stewart (circa Jeff Beck Group) and the aforementioned Winwood (circa Spencer Davis Group). And when he takes it up a notch (as he does on nearly each of Undiscovered’s<\/i> eleven tracks), his voice bears an unnerving similarity to another Stevie, Mr. Wonder.<\/p>\n

The arrangements are shockingly tasteful, not overblown; they couch Morrison’s voice with just the right sort of backing. Shades of Jerry Wexler’s work for Aretha Franklin there. On most tracks the vocals are merely a single-tracked Morrison; on a few he harmonizes pleasingly with himself. One track features a soulful female backing chorus. The last track, “The Last Goodbye,” shows Morrison in the way he must have sounded coming up: a lone vocal, a lone guitar. Sparse works for him too; it’s not difficult to imagine the rest of the album in an unplugged format. But let’s give thanks that Undiscovered<\/i> (a wry title if there ever was one) has the gloss it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beware, dear reader, any review that contains phrases such as “the best [fill in the blank: vocalist, guitarist etc.] since [fill in the blank: name of critically revered artist].” Too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1092],"class_list":["post-9328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-james-morrison","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328","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=9328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9329,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9328\/revisions\/9329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}