Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I would say they don’t make records like THE SCENE OF THE CRIME anymore, but they do. Bettye LaVette, a Northern Soul original, has been making them for quite a while. I had a conversation with someone who was talking about how good LaVette sounded despite being so old, and I kind of laughed inwardly, since she is younger than Iggy Pop, and she looks really, really good. And she sounds even better.

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME has LaVette backed up by the Drive By Truckers, who are uncharacteristically restrained while retaining the energy they deliver on their own fine CDs. The result is incredible. This music is called “blues” and used to be called “soul,” and you’re probably not hearing it unless you have an AM blues station near you, so you need to get this CD for yourself as you’ll never hear it otherwise. There’s not a beatbox within 50 miles of this thing, just guitar and bass and drums and electric piano, and LaVette’s vocals which can go from a whisper to a scream in a heartbeat and make your hair (among other things) stand on end. The only thing that I can compare it to, roughly, would be the Atlantic sessions that Aretha Franklin recorded at Muscle Shoals (and, indeed, THE SCENE OF THE CRIME was recorded at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals) with Duane Allman, and tracks like “Jealousy” and “You Don’t Know Me At All” stand right up with those. My own favorites off of this disc are “They Call It Love” and “The Last Time,” both of which are so greasy that they almost slide off of the disc, but if you want to hear where white country and black southern gospel intersect, then you’ve got to hear the absolutely astounding “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces.” And I’m going to say it one more time: The Drive By Truckers back LaVette up on this disc, and are absolutely perfect, quiet where they need to be, loud where they ought to be, perfect and in the pocket in every way.

If you don’t have any CDs of blues or soul or whatever you want to call it, then you need to have THE SCENE OF THE CRIME. If you have too many blues or soul CDs, you still need this one. Then you’ll need to go back and get every single disc LaVette ever recorded, all of her Anti releases, the long lost Atlantic recording, the Roulette sides, everything. This is a disc that will make you wish you had more than one head to tear off.