Critic’s Pick: Charles Bradley, ‘Changes’

“I try to be a righteous man,” sings soul music earth-shaker Charles Bradley on his third Daptone/Denham album, Changes. “But I’m tired of being used.” With that, the astonishing emergence of this James Brown-meets-Otis Redding revivalist kick-starts a charge of organic funk, a sound very much in keeping with Daptone’s ultra old school R&B appeal.

The underlying vocal urgency, though, presents a paradox that runs through the entire recording. The song in question, Ain’t It a Sin, is serviceable enough to draw on the lifetime of hardships documented so fervently in the 2012 documentary Soul of America, which outlines Bradley’s rise from obscurity to hard-fought discovery, yet it balances in undeniable warmth. But listen closely. Though Bradley embraces life with gospel-esque devotion, he is not about to be toyed with. “If you ain’t gonna do me right,” he sings, “I might just do you in.” That little warning is a catalyst for the lean brass and guitar propulsion that makes Ain’t it a Sin a gloriously ominous party piece.

Bradley frequently lives up to his promo billing as “The Screaming Eagle of Soul” on Changes with shouts and grunts straight out of the James Brown performance manual. Such references are in abundance during a gospel-revised snippet of God Bless America and its accompanying blast of 1970s shout-out soul during Good to Be Back Home. The music then dips into Isaac Hayes-style psychedelia on the fuzzed-out Ain’t Gonna Give it Up before allowing Bradley to roar with evangelical conviction on the global sermon Change for the World.

Not to distract from Bradley’s often volcanic vocal gusto, but a hefty dose of Changes’ charm comes from the massive Daptone/Denham support team, running from the instrumental fire of the Budos Band and the Menahan Street Band to the sweet support singing of the Sha La Das, the Gospel Queens and Saun & Starr. This kind of in-house enforcement, together with Daptone’s keen sense of reconstructing no-frills 1960s and early ’70s style R&B for a modern age, has made the label such a reliable enterprise that most any recording bearing its imprint can be counted on to deliver serious meat and potatoes soul. Of course, it’s Bradley who lights the fuse to all of this musical combustion.

Finally, there is the matter of the title tune, a cover of a 1973 Black Sabbath song that Bradley and Daptone issued as a limited edition vinyl single three years ago. Admittedly, the guitar-less ballad Changes was an oddity even for Sabbath. But here, it becomes a boldfaced confessional with Bradley singing of love, loss and cautious hope like a man comforted by faith and unsettled by the world of turmoil surrounding him. Like the rest of the album, it is a soul testimony of monumental depth, desperation and salvation.

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Critic’s Pick: Charles Bradley, ‘Changes’."