Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Give The People What They Want

Words from 2014:

Give The People What They Want is certainly an appropriate title for Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings' new release. After more than a decade of near constant touring, recording, and as one of the most formidable live acts performing today, they know what their audience wants from them. Happily, it's what they want too.

The appeal of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings just keeps growing. Michael Bublé has duetted with Sharon on "Baby, You've Got What it Takes", after recording "Crazy Love" with the Dap-Kings back in 2009. The Dap-Kings also contributed to several songs on this year's smash album "To Be Loved". They count Beck, John Legend, Lou Reed and Rufus Wainwright among their collaborators, and of course the Dap-Kings were the band behind Amy Winehouse's Back In Black album for which Gabriel Roth, bandleader and co-founder of Daptone Records, won a Grammy for his engineering skills.

Yet it's the Augusta, Georgia native Sharon Jones who is the undisputed centre of attention here. A recent Hollywood turn acting alongside Denzel Washington will certainly do her star power no harm, but one listen to Give The People What They Want will tell you Sharon doesn't need the silver screen to set her name in lights. Her fervent, impassioned singing goes straight to your heart; those sweet soul hooks stay in your head for days on end. These are vocal performances that withstand any comparison to the soul greats.

Give The People What They Want is the band's fifth album, recorded at home in Bushwick's Daptone House of Soul Studios after two years of touring behind 2010's lauded I Learned The Hard Way. These ten songs are seasoned with the classic Soul sound one might expect - yet there's a freshness in the band's performances and songwriting that gives the group's fifth studio album a feel unlike anything they've done before. From the electrifying stomp of album opener "Retreat!" to the instantly familiar feel-good groove of "We Get Along," via "Stranger To My Happiness", which perfectly captures the Dap-Kings' sound in three-and-a-half joyous minutes, this is a record that has it all.

Give the people what they want, indeed.