Burke sets 'Fire' to his latest
Solomon Burke
Like a Fire (Shout! Factory)
ESSENTIAL "We Don't Need It"
On "Like a Fire," Solomon Burke returns to a strategy he's employed with great success recently, tapping a high-powered collection of songwriters for all but one of the songs. Not surprisingly, its general tone - from the MOR blues ambience of the Eric Clapton-penned title track to the tasteful, supper-club treatment of "If I Give My Heart to You" - is derived in good part from that fact, abetted by the work of producer Steve Jordan and a group of veteran session players. Clapton contributes another blues, "Thank You," with a Piedmont cast to it, and Keb' Mo' lends a country-blues hand with "We Don't Need It," a moving narrative of despair and overcoming. Ben Harper livens things up with the Little Feat funk rip-off "A Minute to Rest and a Second to Pray." In lesser hands, "Like a Fire" might have amounted to little more than the sometime gentility, not to say blandness, of its constituent elements. What saves it from that fate is the soul of Solomon Burke. [Stuart Munro]
