Saturday, April 19, 2025

Galactic and Irma Thomas Audience With The Queen 2025

New Orleans funksters Galactic have written an entire record (there's one cover song) for the amazing, still great Irma Thomas. At 84, Thomas can still sing like she sang 40 years ago, if not better. Of course if you heard her at the Jazz and Heritage Fest or on After the Rain 2006, Simply Grand 2008, or Love Is The Foundation 2020, you already knew that. Here, her classic soul/blues/gospel style is updated both stylistically and lyrically, and she storms into 2025 backed by the members of Galactic that both revere her and refuse to take a single step back from their funky march forward.

There's new/old school soul Piece In My Heart, Be Your Lady, and People, all of them sounding a tad like the best of Sharon Jones and the Daptones. Funk oozes out of Where I Belong, Love's Gonna Find A Way, and the social message of the great first single, Lady Liberty. Over You is bluesy, and How Glad I Am and Puppet On Your String have gospel overtones. Gang backup vocals, full choir on a few, and frequently super horn charts spruce up the sound. There's hot guitar and keyboards, and the always fabulous drumming of Staton Moore. The arrangements are darn near perfect every time.

And Irma Thomas sings everything to the ground. She had her first hit in 1959, and she's as great as ever right now. She inhabits, indeed embodies, every lyric in a way only a few singers can. She is magnificent.

I thought After The Rain was her late career pinnacle. Then came Love Is The Foundation, and that raised the bar again. This time a rare, beautiful legacy artist charges into the present and gives us something so wonderful it's just hard to even believe. But here it is. Anyone Who Knows What Soul Is (Will Understand).

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