Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens-What Have You Done My Brother

Goddamn man just check out the fine ladies in this picture and the soul leaking out of their pores. The truth and honesty in their smiles, the pain and heart contained within those ample bodies, toothy smiles and heart-fucking-breaking voices that harmonize with reckless abandon. If you were to channel Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Melvin Seals, Bobby Womack, Bootsy Collins, James Brown, Jackie LaBranch, Gloria Jones and Gladys Knight, squeeze them all together in a French Press, add pure soul concentrate and have a child with Van Morrison the offspring would be this band.

It is impossible to just pick out one song from this album. I would say that "He Knows My Heart" belongs in some dark scene of a Scorsese movie just as it does being sung in a Baptist Church in Memphis along the muddy rivers by a congregation soaked with sweat. "By Your Side"...if there's a woman who can sing that to me or even give me that feeling then there's a five carat ring in the picture and a life of selfless devotion waiting for her while I cry on my knees. I never knew there could be a song that would make me bust out in dance outside of a few Smokey Robinson and Sam Cooke numbers until "I Need You to Hold My Hand" came through the speakers in an orgasm of ecstasy. They are all testifying, they all bring me down genuflecting in humble piety while my consciousness climbs to the stratos.

You can sing it in the car when no one is looking, you can sing it to someone in the moonlight with the sand between your toes, salt caked on dark skin after a midnight swim and a warm six pack stashed on the dunes. You can sing it in a low roofed club up in the 120's in Harlem with a zoot suit and feather in your cap. In truth you can sing it every and anywhere because good vibe tunes such as these contained in this album should be sung as much as possible. But you have to have the heart, the groove and the spirit to do it right. If you don't and you don't get this album then there's no hope; go back to your life and loveless cubicle. Go back to shades of grey and leave the rest of the spectrum for the enlightened, I want every band of it, I want to house it and have it explode out of my door every morning when I arise and take on the new day touched by my sisters, stick my chest out greet it all with a smile.