COMPOSERS: Ray Charles
LABELS: XIII
PERFORMER: Ray Charles
CATALOGUE NO: Bis 640 281-2
Few could stretch blues and popular standards out to such slow and hypnotic effect as Ray Charles. He could also take the worst material and internalise it with unbearable urgency.
Sadly, Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again relegates Charles to a figurehead position, as producer Billy Osborne parades down the overproduced runway with arrangements cut from slick, faceless, synthesised funk that cannot disguise his limited songwriting abilities.
Let’s not even discuss the vapid, cliché-ridden lyrics. Enjoy the opening track, a techno-facelift of Charles’s signature ‘What I’d Say’, and ignore the rest.