Irma Thomas, the R&B queen who brought the world “Time Is on My Side” and “Pain in [or, rather, “Ruler of..”] My Heart,” has never stopped touring and making records, so don’t call this a comeback. Still, her work on various post-Katrina benefits has returned her, somewhat, to the semi-popular spotlight. The aptly titled After the Rain is a fine example of Thomas’ gifts as a singer. She isn’t flashy, doesn’t scream or add eighty-three melismas to convey meaning; rather, she’s a singer of nuance, of spaces and textures, and on this album her grown-up voice is way out front in the mix where the rhythm section, supplemented by surprising touches of fiddle and banjo, mostly just gets out of her way and let’s the woman sing.

The whole album’s strong, but my favorite cut is probably “Till I Can’t Take It Anymore,” the Clyde Otis standard that I most associate with Charlie Rich (who recorded it for his essential Behind Closed Doors album).  At the end of the number, worrying over a man she knows is cheating on her but who she hasn’t yet been able to bring herself to leave, she decides that she will just have to “dream of heaven and live in hell ’til I can’t take it anymore.” She then restates that not-at-all-good plan, over and over, each time with greater anguish, until you figure she’s finally had enough. She really won’t be able to take it any longer very soon, maybe even as soon as the next verse. Maybe…

Irma Thomas “Till I Can’t Take It Any More” from After the Rain (Rounder, 2006)

When the film version of The Fantastic Four was released, I joked to friends that casting Jessica Alba in a role where she spends most of her time invisible was a major design flaw. It certainly wasn’t a casting choice that took full advantage of, you know, her talents.

For the most part, I think Getting Somewhere finds Allison Moorer similarly miscast. Moorer has one of the best voices to emerge from Nashville in what I guess you could call the alternative country-era (yeah, I know: big fish, eensy weensy puddle), and often she’s one of its best singers, too. She can sell songs that aren’t all that good, and she drives good songs out of the park.

Her latest album, and her first produced by new husband Steve Earle, doesn’t give her much of a chance to do either of those things, unfortunately. You can understand why Earle, a limited if often engaging vocalist, has chosen in the past to bury his own voice with all sorts of distorting effects, but doing that to Moorer’s instrument, as is done a few times here, can only lead to distracting drawing-a-moustache-on-the-Mona-Lisa moments. Also frustrating is the way Moorer sings so often here, or so it sounds like to me, in higher keys than normal, reducing her husky distinctiveness and making her sound for the first time more like her sister, Shelby Lynne, than herself. Ditto for the way Moorer is made to compete with Earle’s standard (of late) rock arrangements that wave in the direction of power pop (the track “Fairweather” most successfully) but get bogged down by repetititve, wooden grooves.

Still, the woman is always worth hearing. She can sing, and “How She Does It” is exhibit A. Told in the third-person, Moorer’s song’s about a woman who’s been beaten again by her husband, who is hiding her bruises with make up and struggling to get “the babies in the car” so she can go to work. And then suddenly, unlike Thomas above, she’s had enough. “She usually takes a right to work but turns it to the left,” Moorer observes. “Thinks she might head west.” You go, girl, fast as you can.

Allison Moorer “How She Does It” from Getting Somewhere (Sugarhill, 2006)

As female soul singers go, Candi Staton is probably only surpassed by Aretha, Mavis, and Gladys. Her new His Hands, also not a comeback but definitely a return to the secular after many years in the gospel fold, is one of the best albums of 2006. Seriously, with great songs by Merle Haggard and Charlie Rich, this one is top ten all the way.

Produced by Lambchop member Mark Nevers, and featuring the organ work of Muscle Shoals-ter Barry Beckett, His Hands treats the studio as an additional instrument rather than a nuisance, with the intent to emphasize Staton’s raspy and impassioned voice, to enrich and even complicate the emotion of the song. The title track, with a jaw-dropping whisper-to-a-scream-to-a-prayer arrangement, is a real record, friends and neighbors (and the hands-down best thing songwriter Will Oldham has ever has his name associated with). Every piece works to the fulfillment of the whole, the journey Staton takes us on from tender lover to abusive lover to the hands of the Lord.

Candi Staton “His Hands” from His Hands (Astralwerks, 2006)

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