Atlantic soul singer teams up with Motown mainstay

After a pair of albums for Stax and three Arif Marden-produced albums for Atlantic, Joseph took to the studio with the legendary Lamont Dozier. Unsurprisingly the production and Dozier-penned songs retain a good deal of the Motown sound. What sets this album apart, again unsurprisingly, is Joseph herself, whose gutsy vocals are more rooted in the South than the typical Hitsville singer’s. Freed of Motown’s conventions, Dozier let Joseph vocalize passionately, providing contrast rather than conformity with the arrangements of McKinley Jackson. As on her next album, Feeling the Way, there are some proto-disco sounds here, but Dozier and Jackson keep things fresh, and the players, which include Detroit transplants and Los Angeles hotshots, combine the heat of Motor City with the cool of Southern California. This is an unassuming album whose charms are more subtle than Joseph’s earlier work, but still quite intoxicating. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]