Music Update: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

A lot of people have been chatting up the new Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings album, I Learned The Hard Way. Metacritic says it's reached a level of universal acclaim. One of my friends stated that seeing Sharon Jones in concert was like seeing James Brown at the height of his powers. It's a daunting build up for any album.

But Jones and the Dap-Kings are smooth. There's nary a blip on the album filled with quintessential rhythm & blues riffs and horns zooming in and out at all the right moments, all filled with Sharon Jones' wonderful voice. My only complaint is that the songs are perhaps too good, too polished. Listening to the album from start to finish, it becomes hard to tell one song from another, they all share the same mid-tempo pacing (but then again, who listens to whole albums anymore anyways? Things sound great when mixed in with half a dozen other records to spice up the tempo).

Here they are, live in Vancouver, at the show that prompted the James Brown comment: