And album closer ‘Slow Love’ is a fitting album sendoff, which is pretty self explanatory thematically. Still, ‘Crazy For Your Love’ is a nice simple song about falling in and out of love. But that just means his albums each have a theme. There seems to be more emphasis on identity and its many faces and less on the jumpy bounce of love that Victim of Love had. Overall I would say that Changes is a slower, more introspective album than his last two. Or the wickedly entertaining ‘Ain’t It A Sin’, with its old school funk. A number of artists have covered it, but Bradley makes it his own in a way that gives it a gravitas it hasn’t had before.
Take the title track off the new album: ‘Changes’ is a cover of a Black Sabbath song. You can hear the things he’s been through and you can feel the pain, the disappointment and the joy that those things have crafted within him when he attacks the mic. As with all the soul greats, you can hear the hard times in his delivery. Not that there aren’t a lot of quality soulful voices out there today, but I’d venture to say that Bradley’s is the most authentic in the classical way. We need him here and now and if there is such a thing as destiny, then the reason he wasn’t making soul records when he was 25 is because we needed his voice today. He sounds as if he would’ve been a chart topper in the 70’s alongside Brown and Redding et al. McPherson with rockabilly, Bradley at first sounds as if he was born a few decades too late. Like Pokey LaFarge with western swing and J.D. You get the sense that Bradley was one of the great undiscovered voices in the annuls of pop music history before Daptone Records discovered him and wisely gave him a home and a career.Īnd now with Changes, his third album in four years, Bradley has a trilogy of albums that can rightly be called some of the most exciting in modern day soul music. The reincarnated spirit of James Brown, the razor sharp delivery of Otis Redding and the unhinged forcefulness of Sam Cooke when he really let it belt at some of his live shows.ĭespite releasing his first proper debut record in 2012 at the age of 64, Bradley tears down soul pins with his vocal bowling ball like he’s been doing it all his life. Here is a man who sounds as if he was born with his gravelly croon. READ MORE ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS & MORE FREEĬharles Bradley is proof that you’re never too old to make it.
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