Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: Soul Time! – review

With every album Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings release, the suspicion increases that the recordings might be superfluous to proceedings: that what really counts with this band is the blistering live show. Soul Time! feels like merchandise-stall fodder: stacks of tracks have been issued before, and even those making their first appearance on disc are far from new – most glaringly Longer and Stronger, written to celebrate Jones's 50th birthday in 2006. Then again, newness is a relative concept for a band trading in funk and soul licks patented decades ago, whose avowed aim is to party like it's 1969. And even if the production job by Dap-Kings' frontman/bassist/chief songwriter Bosco Mann is too pristine, there is a crackle in the band's playing that, in the best songs, fans to a full-scale blaze. There is a filthy energy to the thrusting When I Come Home, while New Shoes bounces along with so much fierce attitude, it hardly matters that the song is an amalgam of cliches.