★★★★★
Track Listing: Tower Of Song; Bad As Me; Traveling Shoes; All Blues Hail Mary; Lone
Pilgrim; Hit Or Miss; Dimming Of The Day; I Want To Come Home; Love And
Blessings; Soul Of A Man; Just Dropped In; Charlie Darwin; When The
Deal
Goes Down. Personnel: Tom Jones: vocals; Richard Causon: clavioline, drums, harmonium,
keyboards, piano, tack piano, tambourine, wurlitzer; Sam Dixon:
electric bass; Ian Jennings: string bass; Ethan Johns: bass, guitars,
percussion; Stella Mozgawa: brushes, drums,...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2014-01-25
★★★★★
Sure, scoff at his overwrought way with a song. But Tom Jones has had more panties flung at him than you ever will. His latest is the sound of vet's last lap, produced a la Johnny Cash's American Songs. Covers of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits are good fits; elsewhere, his off the leash vibrato oversells. But the sense of mortality is palpable, and sometimes profound.
- www.rollingstone.com
2013-05-22
★★★★★
www.rounder.com
BY STEVE PICK
Two years ago, Tom Jones officially moved off the golden oldies circuit with a vibrant, dynamic, and thoroughly engrossing album of gospel songs, Praise & Blame. Jones had never really surrendered to nostalgia, having released new recordings in a wide variety of styles including country, pop, electronic dance, and soul every couple of years since his heyday in the late 60s and early 70s...
- blurtonline.com
2013-05-18
★★★★★
It's crazy to comprehend the Tolkien-esque journey that Thomas Woodward first embarked upon nearly half a century ago. Since leaving his sleepy mining community in South Wales, Woodward, under his adopted superhero alias "TOM JONES", has literally done and seen it all. Many times over. A working class lad who survived TB before venturing Dick Whittington-fashion in search of derring-do, Jones has now scored hits crossing six decades with UK number ones as far back as 1965 and as recently as...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-04-27
★★★★★
It may seem a little weird to compare Tom Jones to Johnny Cash. But about ten seconds into Jones's new Praise and Blame CD, that comparison just happens. On this excellent collection of songs examining the human condition, Jones confronts the issues of heaven and hell in a way that Cash did for much of his life, especially toward the end of it. That's the first basis for comparison...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
It arguably started with Johnny Cash, then producer Rick Rubin applied the same methods to Neil Diamond; take a veteran performer, a "heritage" act, in music biz parlance, and place them in an earthier, more intimate environment. "Unplugged" isn't an entirely accurate description, but a word in the promotional material for Spirit In The Room pretty much hits the nail on the head - "unvarnished"...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Assuming he has a full head of hair, there comes a time in every man's life when he must make the decision: to dye or not to dye. Take . In 2009, he was fast approaching 70 and had hair that was even darker than 's. In fairness such blackness went with the Tom territory. He was a priapic crooner of 40 years standing who had spent his late middle age blathering on about sexbombs like a confused granddad at a wedding reception; he was collaborating in an underrated but nevertheless...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Tom Jones is still commendably committed to re-imagining himself as a Rick Rubin-years Johnny Cash, by way of interestingly oddball selections of Americana and bespoke blues covers. Backed by a graceful but gritty band - which includes Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa on drums - a touch of the crotch-thrusting Las Vegas dazzler still flinches in the pleasingly demented showmanship on Jones' voodoo version of Tom Waits' 'Bad As Me'...
- www.nme.com
2012-05-24
★★★★★
Full marks for nerve to Tom Jones for opening his second successive album of stripped-down gravitas rock with Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song, transformed from hotel-bar funk into a finger-picked country blues. Cohen's version is a mordant, blackly comic meditation, but Jones can't play lines about "born with the gift of a golden voice" for laughs and so he turns it, unexpectedly and triumphantly, into a eulogy for a life in music...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2012-05-24
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