On which we celebrate the Queen’s 49th anniversary in show business, actually, counting from her first single, 1960’s “Don’t Mess with My Man.” But given the Queen, who wants to count? This celebration only counts material from the last quarter-century, too, finding Thomas’ voice huskier and just a touch more mannered than over her first half. Still, she is who she is. And she wouldn’t be if she couldn’t bring it.

“Got to Bring It with You,” one of three newly-minted tracks, preaches self-reliance and preaches it assuredly. Oddly enough though, it sets the album off out of step. Thomas’ domain resides mainly within soul. Soul, blurred slightly from gospel’s template of lacking God and desperate to close that gap, focuses usually on the lack of Another (human, usually). Hence “Let It Be Me,” a confident command deftly undercut with a vein of anxiety that its command might go unheeded. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham’s “I’m Your Puppet” finds her in whole- and warm-hearted submission, unlike the jarring one-two of James & Bobby Purify’s original. Only prostration before Another will close up the lack (showing soul hasn’t fallen so far from gospel after all).

New Orleans’ finest come around to play and write for the Queen, and she adapts older material to suit her, like a testifying take on “There Must Be a Better World,” from Dr. John and Doc Pomus. The scariest 3:48 comes from Thomas’ new lyrics (co-written with producer Scott Billington) for “Another Man Done Gone.”

John Fogerty’s “River Is Waiting” returns us to safe ground with surefooted gospel, unless you count how the flood changed the notion of “river” to something you can’t count on for comfort. But the Queen insists, and that’s how she goes about being who she is.