★★★★★
If soul singer Bettye Lavette has proven anything during her stunning mid-life comeback that picked up steam with 2005's move to Anti-, it's that you don't need to write a song to get plenty out of it. That's not news, but in Lavette's case, she and her producers have done a remarkable job choosing material she can inhabit and find new meanings in by way of radical rearrangements and her edgy, taut, often defiant vocals...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
She's a latter-day legend despite 50 years this year in the business. From the doo-wop era to psychedelic soul through disco to funk, new age, New Jack Swing, smooth soul, neo-soul, hip hop soul and now auto-tuned Euro-pop, there has been an unwavering Bettye LaVette steadily belting heartfelt lyrics with all the pathos life has to serve...
- www.soultracks.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Now five albums into her career renaissance, Bettye LaVette's output has become perhaps too predictable. Like each of the four albums that preceded it, Thankful N' Thoughtful finds the singer using her powerhouse, inimitable voice to reinterpret a collection of both familiar and obscure material in a tasteful style that blends elements of vintage blues, Southern soul, and contemporary rock...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2012-11-05
★★★★★
It's taken her 50 years to get here, but Detroit R&B singer Bettye LaVette is finally enjoying the success she's been chasing since her teens. This collection of covers isn't something that she could have recorded back in the 60s, though; its appeal has everything to do with the weathered and world-weary quality of her mature voice. She's a master interpreter, and makes all the material sound as if it were written about her own turbulent life. It's also a nice companion to her new autobiography...
- www.nowtoronto.com
2012-11-05
★★★★★
In the last decade, a number of older soul and blues singers have experienced late-career rebirths. The Daptone label has released successful albums from Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Betty Wright recorded an album with the Roots. The Truth and Soul label has a belter of their own in Lee Fields. Bettye LaVette is another such singer. She recorded her first tune at age 16; she's now 66...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-10-29
★★★★★
Anti- In a world where there's no justice at all, the world would never have taken notice of the talent of Bettye LaVette. The fact that she'd been keeping it real for over four decades when The Scene Of The Crime (backed by the Drive-By Truckers) spun peoples' heads around in 2007 is proof that sometimes justice is verrrrrrrry slow in coming. Dues-paying class act that she is, LaVette has taken it all in stride, put her head down, and kept on doing what she's always done: sing her heart out...
- www.jambands.com
2012-10-15
★★★★★
The veteran soul singer follows up her excellent 2005 comeback release I've Got My Own Hell to Raise with an album that cuts even deeper. 35 years after Atlantic Records declined to release what many regard at LaVette's soul masterpiece, the Muscle Shoals-produced Child of the Seventies, LaVette returns to "the scene of the crime," the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, accompanied by Drive-By Truckers along with famed soul keyboardist Spooner Oldham...
- kexp.org
2012-09-10
★★★★★
The veteran soul singer tackles a variety of British rock songs from the 1960s and '70s on her latest album, in many cases imaginatively re-arranging them until they bear little resemblance to the originals. At age 64, LaVette remains a powerfully effective vocalist whose masterful phrasing finds previously undiscovered depths of emotion and meaning in these venerable songs.
- kexp.org
2012-09-10
★★★★★
The veteran soul singer continues her latter-day career renaissance with another strong album that finds her masterfully interpreting a wide variety of material ranging from Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Neil Young to Sly & the Family Stone, the Black Keys and Gnarls Barkley, with spare production putting the focus squarely on LaVette's achingly soulful vocals.
- kexp.org
2012-09-10
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