Veteran soul master Lee Fields toned down the funk but not the intensity for his latest release, "My World." "My World" has some great grooves, to be sure, but Fields sounds as if he's trying to seduce his listeners instead of herding them onto the dance floor with a funky stick as he did on 1999's "Let's Get a Groove On" and 2002's "Problems," two of the best funk albums released since the '70s.
He still burns, though, especially on "Money I$ King," "Love Comes and Goes," and "My World is Empty Without You," a fabulous cover of the Supremes hit. His band, the Expressions, set the mood with sexy grooves; Fields wins listeners' hearts with slinky vocals that always seem to end with fever-pitched pleas.
The Expressions also play a couple of instrumentals on the album that make me wish they'd release an album on their own. The fact that the band is so good probably shouldn't be surprising, considering the band members are jazz, soul, rap and rock veterans who have played with folks such as James Brown, Sharon Jones, Al Green, Charles Tolliver, Steely Dan, Amy Winehouse, NAS, Ghostface Killah, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Pere Ubu.
As I listen to "My World," I imagine The Dramatics meeting James Brown to sing steamy ballads such as "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World." And there's not a damn thing wrong with that.
