Don’t worry – age hasn’t improved Leon Russell’s voice one bit. On new record “Life Journey” – his 37th solo studio effort, not to mention the hundreds of other artists’ albums on which he’s appeared as a session man – Leon’s idiosyncratic rasp slurs with all the reckless abandon and gravelly assertion of his early-1970s heyday. It’s never pretty, but it’s often impossible to ignore.
Take lead single “Big Lips,” one of two new Russell originals on the record, in which Leon near-mumbles through three straight minutes of up-tempo honky tonk jive. Considering this is the man who penned hauntingly vulnerable “A Song for You” and wordplay-stuffed “Tightrope” earlier in his career, the songwriting’s a bit lacking in creativity – he rhymes “big lips” with “big lips” with “fingertips” with “sweet hips” with “sweet lips.” But he delivers the lines with a growling passion for a good time, and any lyrical simplicity is forgiven when he erupts into one of his trademark Jerry Lee Lewis-cum-Professor Longhair boogie-woogie piano breaks. Toward the track’s conclusion, there’s even a little “bop-bop, bop-bop shadoobee doobee” from the backup singers, just for good measure.
“Down in Dixieland,” the other Russell original, takes a slower approach, with a fat New Orleans horn combo flavoring and punctuating the chorus’s downward chord progression. But the remaining 10 tracks are renditions of blues, country, jazz and R&B classics. You’ve heard old standards like “Georgia on My Mind” and “That Lucky Old Sun” done before, and done well, but don’t write this off as just another platitudinous covers collection: Leon’s got a knack for making things his own.
Buttery slide guitar teases over the syncopated drum and bass jaunt of Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen,” and Russell croaks like a hop toad after a double dose of expectorant, forcing out each twanged syllable with gutbucket expectation.
Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” has been done a thousand times before, but Russell’s deft control of phrasing – terse and rugged one line, mellifluous and sustained the next – keeps the track a sincere, if at times meandering, reading. On “That Lucky Old Sun,” another down-tempo standout, Russell’s keys and the backup gospel choir filter in and out through the song’s foundation of plaintive steel guitar, skittering snare skiffle and modulating pipe organ.
Russell’s yelping melismata on “Fever” are things of Ray Charles-ian beauty, and the song bounces along its piano-organ riff at breakneck pace.
This album is Russell’s first release since “The Union,” the 2010 collaboration with Elton John that returned Leon to national prominence after decades spent toiling as an anonymous rock ‘n’ roll has-been. But while the latter sounded like a record recorded by an aging man, largely keeping to sparse arrangements and contemplative lyrics, “Life Journey” keeps things fun and freewheeling. Now in his 70s, Leon sounds more like he did in the ‘70s than he has in years.
