When Tom Jones sings about being 'born with the gift of a golden voice' on Spirit In The Room, he gives Leonard Cohen's line a different resonance.
Before TV viewers ask, there is, thankfully, no version of U2's Beautiful Day on Tom Jones's latest record. Like its successful predecessor, 2010's God-fearing Praise & Blame, Spirit in the Room is an album of covers. It does not feature Jones's most recent venture into other artists' material, however, in which the massed ranks (and we use the word "rank" advisedly) of Jones and his fellow judges on BBC1's The Voice performed cruel and unusual punishments upon Beautiful Day the other week. You almost felt for the Irish rock titans as the remains of their Day lay bleeding on to the set. On the other hand, neither does this album feature Jones's blistering cover of Howlin' Wolf's Evil, or his extraordinary take on Jezebel, recorded with Jack White in the manner of a satanic Delilah.
Jones's covers, then, can run the gamut from devilish to defibrillated; showbiz was always thus. Having made his peace with his maker on the previous record, he now salutes some of the 20th century's all-powerful writer-performers. There is some intriguing late material here from the two Pauls – McCartney and Simon – plus Leonard Cohen with a classic, and some songs from writers whose royalties aren't quite as stratospheric as all that, one of whom is Madonna's brother-in-law.
At the helm is Ethan Johns, most famous for his work with the Kings of Leon. His tendency is to pit Jones's lusty, gutsy voice against low-key arrangements in which the guitars come in from afar; a pretty transparent signifier of thoughtfulness.
It opens with a good gag though. When Leonard Cohen sang: "I was born with the gift of a golden voice" in a racked rumble on Tower of Song, it was self-deprecating. But Jones really was, giving the line quite a different resonance. Angels have tied him to "the stage", not a table. You hope these nuances will continue to develop further down the tracklisting.
But the levels of detail don't quite sustain. Jones (or possibly Johns) gets points for choosing McCartney's Home and Simon's Love and Blessings, rather than more famous works by their younger selves. Seventy-two next month, Jones is keen not to be cast opposite any age-inappropriate lovelies. There is one incursion of what you might call young people's music in the form of Charlie Darwin by the Low Anthem. It sounds pretty good with Ben Knox Miller's falsetto swapped for Jones's vibrato.
Ultimately, you conclude, Jones's golden voice was built for hooting, hollering and hubba-hubba-ing at the ladies, not mulling things over. While it's great to find Richard and Linda Thompson's The Dimming of the Day on any tracklisting, Jones sounds most at home on Odetta's Hit or Miss and Blind Willie Johnson's Soul of a Man. Tom Waits fans may roll their eyes at the prospect of an inveterate showbiz pro like Jones covering his recent Bad As Me, but you can't deny that Jones, a former philanderer with an enduringly mean set of lungs, has got the voice for it.
By Kitty Empire http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/20/tom-jones-spirit-room-review?newsfeed=true