Review R&B and Soul

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

Soul Time!

Daptone • 2011

Daptone Records is turning ten years old! To celebrate the label’s role in expediting the worldwide revival of soul, they’re releasing a new record by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Although the latest album by the label’s driving force, I Learned The Hard Way, has been released only a little longer than a year ago, this anniversary is a great opportunity to release a special record. Soul Time! is the very exceptional fifth album of the band from Brooklyn, on which Bosco Mann, bassist and bandleader, has put together exclusive songs from the band’s live-repertoire. Which has until now been reserved for people going to Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings concerts only, is now available to a greater public. For Soul Time!, the band went into the studio and recorded all the songs most neatly – whatever that might mean in the context of the tatty Daptone Studios – in order to immortalize them on vinyl. Those who think that the songs loose their quality through the recording couldn’t be more wrong. Instead, these 12 incredibly energetic songs show why the whole world is crazy about this band: Bosco Mann’s recording-skills and production-methods as well as the energy that’s to be found within in the Dap-Kings’ instruments and Sharon Jones’ voice are simply matchless.