CHARLES BRADLEY
''CHANGES''
APRIL 1 2016
40:22
**********
01 - God Bless America 01:31
02 - Good to Be Back Home 03:01
03 - Nobody but You 03:57
04 - Ain't Gonna Give It Up 03:53
05 - Changes 05:43
06 - Ain't It a Sin 03:49
07 - Things We Do for Love 03:28
08 - Crazy for Your Love 04:18
09 - You Think I Don't Know (But I Know) 03:27
10 - Change for the World 03:33
11 - Slow Love 03:38
**********
REVIEW
By Jay Balfour, pitchfork.com
The 67-year-old soul singer's third album on Daptone feels like his most straightforward and best to date.
It’s easy to root for Charles Bradley, the 67-year-old soul singer who has spent the last few years enjoying a breakout career on Daptone Records. Bradley’s underdog narrative has remained as genuinely endearing as it has perpetually marketable, and Changes, his third album, feels like his straightforward best to date, the result of an improved dynamic between the singer and his band. If he ever sounded awkwardly patched in on previous recordings, Bradley now seems to command ownership of his songs like never before. It’s an accomplished skill in the world of retro-soul, and Bradley sounds vital instead of nostalgic because of it.
Changes’ lyrics are immediately and sometimes overly familiar, but Bradley’s unmistakable voice is the obvious draw throughout. For a guy who has often been affectionately pigeonholed—Bradley has earned a tagline as the “The Screaming Eagle of Soul”—the new album instead finds him at his most versatile and complete. The record opens with a soulful gospel rendition of “God Bless America” in which the singer delivers an organ-laced testimony; the same keys pop up in funkier form on follow-up “Good to Be Back at Home.” After spending much of his seventh decade as a first-time international headliner, Bradley sings about the mixture of relief and disappointment in his return trip. Like other songs on the album, the song is vaguely and upliftingly political: On “Changed For the World” Bradley tells us "Heaven is crying, the world is shaking." Half singing, half preaching, he warns “God is unhappy, the moon is breaking / Blood is spilling, God is coming.”
Musically, Changes fits squarely into the Daptone house sound, but the session players—primarily from Menahan Street Band but also Bradley’s touring group The Extraordinaries—are more restrained here to make room for Bradley's big presence and even bigger voice. But the album is nonetheless inflected with the referential post-funk and hip-hop drum sounds of label guitarist Thomas Brenneck and company. Near the end of “Nobody But You” a horn line quotes the unmistakable saxophone from Seals and Crofts 1972 hit “Summer Breeze,” whereas the opening piano-laced drum break on “You Think I Don’t Know (But I Know)” conjures up Freddie Scott’s “(You) Got What I Need,” now perhaps better known to all as the sample chop Biz Markie finagled into “Just a Friend.”
Much of the album is about love: searching for it, being wronged by it, basking in it. Of the spare forty-minute tracklist, “Things We Do For Love” might be the most satisfyingly retro offering, complete with a dose of doo-wop accompaniment and a nimble, romantic groove. The album’s greatest accomplishment is in its most unexpectedly personal moment though, in which Bradley wrestles an out-of-character Black Sabbath ballad about a breakup into an agonizing paean to his late mother. After spending a lifetime estranged, Bradley patched up his relationship with his mother in time to serve as her caretaker before she passed, and also early enough that she got to see his career finally take off. In her absence and in the midst of post-success family quarrels, Bradley sounds heartbreakingly alone when he wails “I’ve lost the best friend I’ve ever had.” “Changes,” and its accompanying video, show the singer at his most emotionally unhinged and dramatically vulnerable.
A few years ago, Bradley’s success seemed more romantic in its improbability. “We found an authentic soul man that liked our music,” Brenneck glowed of his band’s initial collaboration with the singer in 2012. Changes somehow feels more natural, in which Bradley comes off as an obvious star, like he's belonged here the whole time. Surrounded by talented revivalists half his age, the singer remains a precious commodity: the real thing. He’s not reenacting or revisiting, he’s on his first run through. And it's still inspiring to watch him live it out at last.
**********
REVIEW/AMG
Mark Deming
If Wilson Pickett could cover the Archies and Al Green could interpret the Bee Gees, why shouldn't Charles Bradley put his spin on Black Sabbath? Bradley's deep, soulful reading of Black Sabbath's "Changes" (from 1972's Vol. 4) became something of a viral sensation when it first surfaced on a Record Store Day single in 2013. Now it's become the title track and cornerstone of Bradley's third album, and in this context it doesn't sound like a novelty, but like the striking, deeply felt performance it truly is. As on his two previous albums, Bradley is one of the most authentic-sounding artists in the 2010s retro-soul sweepstakes on Changes. The production by Thomas Brenneck is straightforward but naturalistically effective, and puts Bradley's rough but passionate vocals in engaging relief with the accompanists. (Most of the album features the Menahan Street Band backing Bradley, though the Budos Band does the honors on two cuts.) Most of the songs on Changes are new, but they sound like they could have been prize Atlantic or Stax rarities from the mid-'60s, and the performances honor the sound and the emotional power of classic soul. Bradley spent years imitating James Brown, and the influence of Mr. Dynamite is still audible on many of these tunes. But since he launched his belated recording career, Bradley has developed a greater sense of self and more confidence in his own musical personality. On Changes, the rough-hewn power of Bradley's voice is at its most powerful, and there's a fierce sense of longing and need in this music that's almost tactile in its realism. Charles Bradley doesn't sound like a '60 soul singer, he sounds like a great soul singer regardless of era. And Changes shows Bradley still has plenty of new ground to explore at the age of 68. That's a lot more than one can say for the other guy who sang "Changes," Ozzy Osbourne.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Steve Leggett
Soul and R&B singer Charles Bradley definitely didn't arrive as a recording artist by taking the easy route. Born in Gainesville, Florida in 1948, but raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bradley spent a good part of his childhood living on the streets. A transformational moment came when his sister took him to see James Brown at the Apollo in 1962. Bradley was struck by Brown's energy and stage manner, and began practicing microphone tricks with a broom at home, dreaming of being a star on his own stage, and it was a dream he would never abandon in spite of all sorts of mishaps, misdirects, and general hard times.
Bradley escaped Brooklyn by joining the federal Job Corps program, which took him to Bar Harbor, Maine, where he learned to cook, a profession he was to fall back on time and time again. He also put together a band in Maine and began playing local gigs. The band didn't last long, though, and when most of its members were drafted, and with the Vietnam War hanging in the air, Bradley moved to Wassaic, New York, where he worked as a cook at a hospital for the mentally ill. Nine years later, he left that position and hitchhiked west, ending up in Alaska for a time before moving to California, again taking a job as a chef, and for the next 20 years he performed music on the side, playing whatever gigs he could find. When he was laid off from his position, though, he began to doubt his decision to live so far from where he grew up.
Bradley eventually relocated back to Brooklyn, this time working at odd jobs instead of returning to being a chef. He never let go of his musical dreams, and he began performing his James Brown-inspired routines in such local clubs as Black Velvet, attracting a loyal following and eventually capturing the attention of Gabriel Roth from Daptone Records. Roth immediately brought the fiery singer into label sessions, releasing a single, "Take It as It Comes," that showed what Bradley had to offer as a vocalist. Roth also introduced Bradley to Thomas Brenneck, then a guitarist, songwriter, and home producer for Dirt Rifle & the Bullets. The pair had an affinity for each other musically, and together they released two singles on Daptone as Charles Bradley & the Bullets before the actual group by that name disbanded (most of the members went in an Afro-beat direction with the Budos Band).
No Time for Dreaming
Brenneck and Bradley continued to work together, and after Bradley told him about waking up in his home one morning to discover his nephew had shot and killed his brother, Brenneck suggested they tell the story in music as a catharsis and as a cautionary tale. The result, tracked with the Menahan Street Band, was a pair of impassioned singles, "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)" and "Heartaches and Pain," which Brenneck released on his Daptone sublabel Dunham Records. These weren't songs drawn from Bradley's Black Velvet act, but were instead highly personal and striking outings that put his own emerging voice as a singer and songwriter at the center of things. A full album for Dunham, No Time for Dreaming, appeared early in 2011. Bradley received global acclaim for the album, and toured relentlessly to support it. His follow-up, Victim of Love, was released in the spring of 2013. In 2015, Bradley released a single through Daptone that featured a powerful, soul-charged reworking of the Black Sabbath number "Changes." The single and its accompanying music video became underground hits, and the song became the cornerstone of Bradley's next Dunham/Daptone album, 2016's Changes.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
********************
''CHANGES''
APRIL 1 2016
40:22
**********
01 - God Bless America 01:31
02 - Good to Be Back Home 03:01
03 - Nobody but You 03:57
04 - Ain't Gonna Give It Up 03:53
05 - Changes 05:43
06 - Ain't It a Sin 03:49
07 - Things We Do for Love 03:28
08 - Crazy for Your Love 04:18
09 - You Think I Don't Know (But I Know) 03:27
10 - Change for the World 03:33
11 - Slow Love 03:38
**********
REVIEW
By Jay Balfour, pitchfork.com
The 67-year-old soul singer's third album on Daptone feels like his most straightforward and best to date.
It’s easy to root for Charles Bradley, the 67-year-old soul singer who has spent the last few years enjoying a breakout career on Daptone Records. Bradley’s underdog narrative has remained as genuinely endearing as it has perpetually marketable, and Changes, his third album, feels like his straightforward best to date, the result of an improved dynamic between the singer and his band. If he ever sounded awkwardly patched in on previous recordings, Bradley now seems to command ownership of his songs like never before. It’s an accomplished skill in the world of retro-soul, and Bradley sounds vital instead of nostalgic because of it.
Changes’ lyrics are immediately and sometimes overly familiar, but Bradley’s unmistakable voice is the obvious draw throughout. For a guy who has often been affectionately pigeonholed—Bradley has earned a tagline as the “The Screaming Eagle of Soul”—the new album instead finds him at his most versatile and complete. The record opens with a soulful gospel rendition of “God Bless America” in which the singer delivers an organ-laced testimony; the same keys pop up in funkier form on follow-up “Good to Be Back at Home.” After spending much of his seventh decade as a first-time international headliner, Bradley sings about the mixture of relief and disappointment in his return trip. Like other songs on the album, the song is vaguely and upliftingly political: On “Changed For the World” Bradley tells us "Heaven is crying, the world is shaking." Half singing, half preaching, he warns “God is unhappy, the moon is breaking / Blood is spilling, God is coming.”
Musically, Changes fits squarely into the Daptone house sound, but the session players—primarily from Menahan Street Band but also Bradley’s touring group The Extraordinaries—are more restrained here to make room for Bradley's big presence and even bigger voice. But the album is nonetheless inflected with the referential post-funk and hip-hop drum sounds of label guitarist Thomas Brenneck and company. Near the end of “Nobody But You” a horn line quotes the unmistakable saxophone from Seals and Crofts 1972 hit “Summer Breeze,” whereas the opening piano-laced drum break on “You Think I Don’t Know (But I Know)” conjures up Freddie Scott’s “(You) Got What I Need,” now perhaps better known to all as the sample chop Biz Markie finagled into “Just a Friend.”
Much of the album is about love: searching for it, being wronged by it, basking in it. Of the spare forty-minute tracklist, “Things We Do For Love” might be the most satisfyingly retro offering, complete with a dose of doo-wop accompaniment and a nimble, romantic groove. The album’s greatest accomplishment is in its most unexpectedly personal moment though, in which Bradley wrestles an out-of-character Black Sabbath ballad about a breakup into an agonizing paean to his late mother. After spending a lifetime estranged, Bradley patched up his relationship with his mother in time to serve as her caretaker before she passed, and also early enough that she got to see his career finally take off. In her absence and in the midst of post-success family quarrels, Bradley sounds heartbreakingly alone when he wails “I’ve lost the best friend I’ve ever had.” “Changes,” and its accompanying video, show the singer at his most emotionally unhinged and dramatically vulnerable.
A few years ago, Bradley’s success seemed more romantic in its improbability. “We found an authentic soul man that liked our music,” Brenneck glowed of his band’s initial collaboration with the singer in 2012. Changes somehow feels more natural, in which Bradley comes off as an obvious star, like he's belonged here the whole time. Surrounded by talented revivalists half his age, the singer remains a precious commodity: the real thing. He’s not reenacting or revisiting, he’s on his first run through. And it's still inspiring to watch him live it out at last.
**********
REVIEW/AMG
Mark Deming
If Wilson Pickett could cover the Archies and Al Green could interpret the Bee Gees, why shouldn't Charles Bradley put his spin on Black Sabbath? Bradley's deep, soulful reading of Black Sabbath's "Changes" (from 1972's Vol. 4) became something of a viral sensation when it first surfaced on a Record Store Day single in 2013. Now it's become the title track and cornerstone of Bradley's third album, and in this context it doesn't sound like a novelty, but like the striking, deeply felt performance it truly is. As on his two previous albums, Bradley is one of the most authentic-sounding artists in the 2010s retro-soul sweepstakes on Changes. The production by Thomas Brenneck is straightforward but naturalistically effective, and puts Bradley's rough but passionate vocals in engaging relief with the accompanists. (Most of the album features the Menahan Street Band backing Bradley, though the Budos Band does the honors on two cuts.) Most of the songs on Changes are new, but they sound like they could have been prize Atlantic or Stax rarities from the mid-'60s, and the performances honor the sound and the emotional power of classic soul. Bradley spent years imitating James Brown, and the influence of Mr. Dynamite is still audible on many of these tunes. But since he launched his belated recording career, Bradley has developed a greater sense of self and more confidence in his own musical personality. On Changes, the rough-hewn power of Bradley's voice is at its most powerful, and there's a fierce sense of longing and need in this music that's almost tactile in its realism. Charles Bradley doesn't sound like a '60 soul singer, he sounds like a great soul singer regardless of era. And Changes shows Bradley still has plenty of new ground to explore at the age of 68. That's a lot more than one can say for the other guy who sang "Changes," Ozzy Osbourne.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Steve Leggett
Soul and R&B singer Charles Bradley definitely didn't arrive as a recording artist by taking the easy route. Born in Gainesville, Florida in 1948, but raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bradley spent a good part of his childhood living on the streets. A transformational moment came when his sister took him to see James Brown at the Apollo in 1962. Bradley was struck by Brown's energy and stage manner, and began practicing microphone tricks with a broom at home, dreaming of being a star on his own stage, and it was a dream he would never abandon in spite of all sorts of mishaps, misdirects, and general hard times.
Bradley escaped Brooklyn by joining the federal Job Corps program, which took him to Bar Harbor, Maine, where he learned to cook, a profession he was to fall back on time and time again. He also put together a band in Maine and began playing local gigs. The band didn't last long, though, and when most of its members were drafted, and with the Vietnam War hanging in the air, Bradley moved to Wassaic, New York, where he worked as a cook at a hospital for the mentally ill. Nine years later, he left that position and hitchhiked west, ending up in Alaska for a time before moving to California, again taking a job as a chef, and for the next 20 years he performed music on the side, playing whatever gigs he could find. When he was laid off from his position, though, he began to doubt his decision to live so far from where he grew up.
Bradley eventually relocated back to Brooklyn, this time working at odd jobs instead of returning to being a chef. He never let go of his musical dreams, and he began performing his James Brown-inspired routines in such local clubs as Black Velvet, attracting a loyal following and eventually capturing the attention of Gabriel Roth from Daptone Records. Roth immediately brought the fiery singer into label sessions, releasing a single, "Take It as It Comes," that showed what Bradley had to offer as a vocalist. Roth also introduced Bradley to Thomas Brenneck, then a guitarist, songwriter, and home producer for Dirt Rifle & the Bullets. The pair had an affinity for each other musically, and together they released two singles on Daptone as Charles Bradley & the Bullets before the actual group by that name disbanded (most of the members went in an Afro-beat direction with the Budos Band).
No Time for Dreaming
Brenneck and Bradley continued to work together, and after Bradley told him about waking up in his home one morning to discover his nephew had shot and killed his brother, Brenneck suggested they tell the story in music as a catharsis and as a cautionary tale. The result, tracked with the Menahan Street Band, was a pair of impassioned singles, "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)" and "Heartaches and Pain," which Brenneck released on his Daptone sublabel Dunham Records. These weren't songs drawn from Bradley's Black Velvet act, but were instead highly personal and striking outings that put his own emerging voice as a singer and songwriter at the center of things. A full album for Dunham, No Time for Dreaming, appeared early in 2011. Bradley received global acclaim for the album, and toured relentlessly to support it. His follow-up, Victim of Love, was released in the spring of 2013. In 2015, Bradley released a single through Daptone that featured a powerful, soul-charged reworking of the Black Sabbath number "Changes." The single and its accompanying music video became underground hits, and the song became the cornerstone of Bradley's next Dunham/Daptone album, 2016's Changes.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
********************
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