Karen Washington & the New Singing Stars – Plead the Blood of Jesus

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.

Karen Washington and producer Eric Sharper team up on a new project, Plead the Blood of Jesus, another southern-fried quartet album from the duo.  Backed by the uber-competent New Singing Stars, Washingtonsings through a stack of bright, melodic songs packed with Biblical instruction and mother wit.

Washington eschews melisma and complex runs for entreating, tear-filled soprano blasts of angst and passion.  As such, she sounds like a girl group alumna, a Shangri-La or Shirelle gone gospel.  For that matter, “Thank God I’m Blessed” and the compelling, stroll-tempo “For the Love of God” have a ’60s garage-pop feel in their rhythm and chord progression. 

Meanwhile, the opening “Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus” and “What a Mighty God He Is” are full of gospel pep and vigor, the latter a congregational sing along with a quartet vamp.  “He’s Sweet I Know” is the classic hymn given a contemporary arrangement.

The album would have been stronger had the heavy emphasis on synth been supplanted, or at least augmented, with a real brass section, or just simply the standard guitar-bass-drums-organ combo.

A stroke survivor and prolific recording artist, Karen Washington of South Georgiabegan her singing career in the mid-1970s as a young member of her family’s group, the Family Starlites.  She grooved into the quartet sound back then and continues to deliver music you expect to hear on gospel radio stations south of the Mason-Dixon: not melodramatic or necessarily shriek-inducing, but Sunday afternoon sacred enjoyment.