During his rain-drenched set at this year’s Jazz Fest, Aaron Neville quietly introduced a new song, “Stompin’ Ground”—a standout that found the singer back in “Hercules” territory, waxing streetwise about the spirit of his hometown. Neville’s albums always have one track like this—one gem of uncut New Orleans funk—but that’s usually it. Too often, Neville’s worked with producers (and that includes Don Was, who did the much-praised My True Story) who have squandered his voice either on glossy arrangements or shopworn cover tunes.
Not the case this time. In Soulive leader Eric Krasno, Neville has finally found a hip producer who’s willing to let him take chances. Clearly using the great Toussaint-produced “Hercules” as a template (and directly quoting its riff on “Fragile World”), Krasno keeps the sound raw and funky, using the skilled Daptone crew as the band—not a string synthesizer in the house. In the past, Neville’s been willing to approach even the most familiar covers as though he wrote them, but this time he really did write everything, in collaboration with Krasno and Dave Gutter of Rustic Overtones (one track, “Make Your Momma Cry,” is reworked from a ’90s Neville Brothers album). In another smart move, Krasno gets Neville to sing in a soulful deeper register, usually saving the trademark falsetto for the ballads where it belongs. This comes out as the most New Orleans–sounding album he’s ever made, even if he had to go to New York to make it.
Many of the tracks still find him in familiar romancer mode: “All of the Above” is a worthy addition to his stack of love pledges, though it’s likely the first with a trombone solo. “Be Your Man” puts the band’s retro tendencies to work, successfully evoking the vibe (and the fuzz guitar) of ’70s blaxpiolitation funk. And the joyful doo-wop homage “Sarah Ann” feels more personal than anything on My True Story, not least because he puts his beloved’s name right there in the title. But many of these tracks go a lot deeper: The tough “Ain’t Gonna Judge You” is built on righteous anger, not a familiar mode for him. The finale “Fragile World” is unlike anything he’s done before, a spoken sermon that looks directly at the gravest social ills, quoting Marvin Gaye (and oddly enough, Tears for Fears) to drive the point home. It ends the only way it can, with a prayer for peace and that falsetto coming down from the heavens one more time.
