CRIMINAL NEGLECT:

Good Days Have Arrived, but Bad Times Have a Say (STEPHEN HOLDEN, 2/11/08, NY Times)

Lean and agile, executing low kicks on high heels, [Bettye] LaVette, whose acclaimed latest record is “The Scene of the Crime” (Anti Records), is living proof that classic soul is as durable a style as any brand of American music. Ms. LaVette remarked that because she grew up in Detroit, Motown Records might have seemed her natural destination. But her voice and attitude were apparently too raw to be fitted into the sleek 1960s Sound of Young America envisioned by Berry Gordy; she eventually recorded for the label (briefly) in the early 1980s.

Like Ms. Turner since her resurgence two decades ago, Ms. LaVette has astutely broadened her repertory to include pop and rock songs outside the traditional purview of soul, and the earthy directness she imparts to them can be revelatory. Backed by muscular, gleaming blues arrangements featuring Al Hill on piano, Brett Lucas on guitar, Chuck Bartels on bass and Daryl Pierce on drums, she sang material by the likes of Lucinda Williams (“Joy”), Fiona Apple (“Sleep to Dream”) Joan Armatrading (“Down to Zero”) and Sinead O’Connor (“I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”).

The most compelling performances were expressions of painful self-recognition by characters who have absorbed life’s lessons the hard way. Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s obscure “Talking Old Soldiers” (from the 1971 album “Tumbleweed Connection”), is the fatalistic monologue of a barfly who has outlived his hard-drinking army buddies. The alcoholic narrator of the old George Jones hit “Choices” acknowledges the destructive consequences of a lifetime of bad decisions.