My Amazon Reviews: Seal "Soul"

Opening the All American Songbook, 4 out of 5 Stars

To my ears, Seal is one of the finest soul vocalists on Earth. So after the robotic and only slightly engaging System, he follows up with an album that would seem to suit his immense gifts. "Soul" dips into the golden soul songbook and emerges with a thoroughly enjoyable, if not challenging, album. To make sure everything was immaculate, Seal hauled in super-producer David Foster. Foster has spit and polished everyone from latter day Chicago to the pipes of Celine Dion. His wide-screen production makes everything shimmery smooth, with horns, strings and back-ups providing movie-soundtrack worthy bigness. Seal's gruff but velvety voice tackles the twelve songs here with gusto. Make no bones about it; "Soul" is a gold plated crowd pleaser, and really does sound like a labor of love for Seal.

My slight disappointment is that "Soul's" song selection is comprised of songs you'd likely hear two or three times a day on your local All Golden Oldies radio station. While Seal does pull a couple surprises out of the bag (Ann Peeble's "I Can't Stand The Rain" and Denice William's "Free"), he could have easily dug deeper than the done to death "Here I Am Come and Take Me" or "If You Don't Know Me By Now." Even with the safest material here, Seal's "Soul" makes for a pleasant interlude. My hope is that, having seen this album ride the charts for over a year, Seal will first make a new album of originals that suits his skills, and then make "Soul II" with a set list that dips into a deeper well.