The Love Album – Kim Burrell

Kim Burrell
The Love Album
Shanachie Entertainment (2011)
http://www.shanachie.com/

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.

It’s all you need. A many-splendored thing. According to Mickey and Sylvia, it can even make you fail in school. It’s arguably the most written about emotion in all of popular music.

Love.

Grammy nominated and Stellar Award-winning singer Kim Burrell, whose vocal prowess has influenced artists from Beyonce to Justin Timberlake, takes on this timeless subject in all of its manifestations on her appropriately titled The Love Album. The collection of ten songs deliberately blurs the lines, musically and lyrically, between spiritual and physical love. Here, the “you” in “I love you” is sometimes ambiguous and other times overt.  As Kirk Franklin commented, “Ms. Burrell is beginning to break down those walls of the church and the romantic.”

Throughout the album, urban AC songs are converted into religious performances and vice versa, but whether Burrell is singing about love of God or love of a human being, it’s a sweet love, a clean love, a pure love. In this, the project is reminiscent of another Shanachie release, 2009’s The Gift of Love, by Melba Moore and Phil Perry.

The first four selections, including the current single, “Sweeter,” are just okay and do not give Burrell room to flex her estimable vocal talents, although the string-laden “Love So Pure” does allow her to weave in light top notes extemporaneously like Sarah Vaughan.

“Open Up the Door,” a lovely praise ballad written by Kim’s sister Kathy, literally throws open the door to a far more musically interesting second half. This selection allows Burrell to do what she does best: improvise over, under and through the melody like a finely-honed gospel instrument. Similarly, “Is This the Way Love Goes?” is a thing of beauty, as Burrell sings accompanied by Eddie Brown’s marvelous classical-jazz piano.  A CD teaming Burrell and Brown — throw in a string bass but nothing more — would be an aural treat.

Speaking of aural treat, The Love Album has a deft production courtesy of a team of producers, including the talented Asaph Ward.

Songs such as Twinkie Clark’s “Jesus is a Love Song” is given an especially jazzy treatment and El DeBarge’s “Love Me in a Special Way” has explicitly religious overtones. The concluding track, “Pray for Love,” sums up the album’s intent.  It is an R&B-drenched cry to hate evil and grasp love.  “Grab somebody by the hand and pray for love,” Burrell sings.  Amen.

Four of Five Stars

Picks: “Open Up the Door,” “Is This the Way Love Goes?”