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Artist: Bettye Lavette
Album: Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
Total Tracks: 12
Release Date: 25 May 2010
Total Length: 00:52:56
Notable Tracks: Elton John's "Dont Let the Sun Come Down on Me," Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" and Led Zepplin's "All My Love"
For Those Who Like: Interpretations of British Rock; with vocal reminiscence of "Great Gig in the Sky"
Overall Rating: 4.5/5 Pears

In the sea of mass produced, grossly predictable pop music it is so refreshing to hear thoughtful, soulful and carefully rendered performances; particularly with cover songs which can sometimes be either too mirroring or too avant garde.

Bettye Lavette's website claims her to be the "The Great Lady of Soul." Even with 40 years of Motown experience, this woman still knows how to sing and groove. Her latest work is a true testament to this statement. "Interpretations" is a collection of Rob Mathes arrangements of some of the British Invasion's most time-tested tunes. From the Beatles to the Moody Blues, Bettye passionately sings the words to these songs, which are reinvented in more piano-pop-neosoul terms.

If one speaks of true testaments, it is easy to say about Lavette's performance that this album is the Ten Commandments of artistic liberty and honesty.

My only complaint? The live recording of "Love Reign O'er Me" trumped the emotional connectivity the rest of the album lacked slightly. Will there be a live interpretations album? There better be a recording of her performances with Robert Plant this summer, damn it.

And where's Rocketman? Should not that be a demanded track?

Anyway, here's to the best collection of non-originals since Johnny Cash's pre mortis "American" series.

Johnathon Keefe of Slant Magazine tends to agree. Check out his review below:

No one could ever say that Bettye LaVette doesn't know precisely what her strengths are. The veteran soul singer, among the finest interpretive vocalists in modern music, has titled her latest collection Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. It isn't just her immediately identifiable, raspy alto that makes LaVette such a treasure; it's that she truly takes possession of a song, using her intuitive, soulful sense of phrasing to find new facets to even the most well-worn material. If the album's title is a bit on the nose, there's nothing the least bit obvious about LaVette's inspired arrangements and performances.

That ability to render familiar songs unrecognizable serves her well on Interpretations, as she covers some canonical material by the premier British rock artists. The Beatles are heavily represented, with George Harrison's melancholy "Isn't It a Pity" and a pensive reading of Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" both providing LaVette with opportunities to apply her world-weary perspective to contrasting emotional contexts. But her blistering turn on Lennon and McCartney's "The Word" is one of the real highlights of the set, recalling some of the first-rate blues arrangements from her last album, The Scene of the Crime, and staking a fearsome claim that there may not be a better rock singer alive.

It's a claim LaVette repeatedly backs up as she tackles Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," Led Zeppelin's "All My Love," and the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me." It's the live recording of "Reign" that is perhaps the most impressive: A show-stopping performance from the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors, it finds LaVette at her most raw and powerful, and it speaks to the simply unassailable quality of her voice. Her rendition of the Rolling Stones's "Salt of the Earth," on which she changes a few select words to give the song a more contemporary resonance, is the most flawless of her studio recordings here. And it's some kind of minor miracle that she finds new life in Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me."

Divine intervention aside, it's a matter of the unparalleled depth of LaVette's interpretive skill that she can take a covers album and make it sound like a collection of originals. It's all the more remarkable that she can do so with such consistency. Interpretations may be the fourth album in her career renaissance, but LaVette's extraordinary gifts and her willingness to challenge herself have both kept her approach compelling and artistically rich.

Brava, Miss Lavette. We'll not let the sun go down on you, just yet.