Joan Osborne is still best known in the UK for the huge hit single "(What If God Was) One Of Us", but her career is so much more than that.
From her own blues/soul albums to a stint with the Grateful Dead to a scene stealing appearance in the rockumentary Standing In The Shadows Of Motown right on to the 2006 country album Pretty Little Stranger, she has always managed to dash preconceptions and come up trumps. If you get the chance, track down one of the live recordings of the shows she performed with Phil Lesh & Friends for some truly amazing music. But, now, a year after its US release, her latest album is getting a UK release.
It's a hybrid album, part tribute/part original, almost a follow up to her 2002 covers album How Sweet It Is, but with half a dozen new songs to keep her old fans happy. Ms Osborne has a fabulously expressive voice which turns staples such as "Ain't No Sunshine", the title track and the Bobby "Blue" Bland staple "I've Got To Use My Imagination" into her very own tales.
She also takes on the smooth stylistics classic, "Break Up To Make Up", and turns in an emotional reading that suggests it's a song she can easily relate to. On the down side, 'Heat Wave' by Martha & the Vandellas was always grossly overrated and Joan fails, following in the footsteps of Linda Ronstadt, at redeeming it. One of two bonus tracks plucked from the the motion picture soundtrack, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, alongside an absolute killer version of Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted", that takes one of my all time favourite songs, and makes it sound brand new. It was amazing when it first came out, and it's amazing now.
Of the original songs "Eliminate The Night" and "I Know What's Goin' On" can hold their high in exalted company and the album is bolstered with a UK only bonus track, "Everybody Needs A Friend", to make it an essential album for those of us followed Ms Osborne's career through its winding road.
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