Bettye LaVette - Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

Bettye LaVette

Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

(Anti-)

Website: www.anti.com

Soul music aficionados have recently enjoyed the resurgence of American stylist Bettye LaVette from a long time lost to an unnecessary career stall. When Anti Records lit a fire under her career in 2005 with the release of “I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise” she again rose to prominence in the musical community, and rightfully so. Two albums later she is now interpreting British rock classics and truth be told, it is a bit of a hit and miss affair. Most readers of this publication will understand completely when I say that it’s about freaking time that we stopped worshipping classic rock hits and make room in our listening world for something, anything different. It seems that the folks at Anti- thought it would be cool to get Ms. LaVette to wrap her raspy pipes around such astoundingly overdone tracks like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, The Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin” and Sir Elton John’s turgid “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. Thankfully they scraped a little deeper with the less oft consumables like “Salt Of The Earth”, “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad” and “Isn’t It A Pity”. LaVette sings everything in very much the same guttural voice throughout and mostly these downturned versions don’t really add anything to her canon. It’s a pleasing enough listen, but more often than not when LaVette reaches for the money shot notes in these songs it sounds like a bad Tina Turner imitation. But maybe that is just my interpretation.