Take Me To Church

Lizz Wright,  Freedom and Surrender


In the classic 60's soul era, you could hear the sound of gospel music in most every R&B hit: the note-bending vocals, the call and response, and the longing for transcendent love: think Aretha, Wilson, Otis, Marvin, Sam, Solomon, Mavis.


But as the R&B form aged, the church influences waned and its own secular traditions -- first funk, then disco and later hip-hop -- exerted a more powerful gravitational pull.





Lizz Wright comes from that earlier church-y place but with a distinctive jazz style.  On Freedom and Surrender, she brings a gospel foundation to a repertoire that runs from Nick Drake to the brothers Gibb to contemporary neo-soul.  With a voice recalling Paula Cole, phrasing to rival Cassandra Wilson, and a glossy production matching Joni Mitchell's classic, Court and Spark, she has produced the year's best grownup album of vocal performance.



Here's her take on the Bee Gee's nearly forgotten, "To Love Somebody," which her aching longing rescues from cheesiness forever:

"The New Game," shows she can bring us out into the aisles, too.  

Somebody give me an "Amen."