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I Learned the Hard Way

  • Daptone

The latest from these funk/soul throwbacks further affirms the validity of working in specific styles, even ones most people stopped exploring decades ago.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are the rarest type of retro/revivalist band-- the type that transcends its devotion to a style of music associated with a distant past. They make soul music in the classic sense, the kind of tracks that might have been laid down in Memphis, Muscle Shoals, Detroit, Philadelphia, or Chicago in the late 1960s and early 70s. But there's more to their sound than a nostalgia trip-- it's an affirmation of the validity of working in specific styles, even ones most people stopped exploring decades ago.

The Dap-Kings succeed through attention to detail. While a lot of music makes aesthetic or stylistic nods to 60s, almost none of it actually captures the sonic character of the era. But on each of their albums, Jones and her collaborators, led by Gabriel Roth, have done just that. And it doesn't just come down to the production and placement of the microphones. Jones deserves the most credit, simply for having an amazing voice that she understands how to wield effectively. Her impeccable sense of delivery balances power with nuance, varying her forcefulness for maximum impact. The songs give her plenty of room to move, too-- if these tracks weren't every bit as good as the ones that inspired them, all of the performance and production acumen in the world couldn't save them. As rote as it sounds, "Better Things" and "The Game Gets Old", among others on I Learned the Hard Way, would likely be classics today if they'd been released alongside the music that influenced them. In fact, they may yet become classics to a smaller, more niche audience today.

"Better Things" in particular is incredible, a brilliant kiss-off in which Jones reveals layers of anguish beneath her anger, while the band supports her with a heavy Muscle Shoals-style groove. It's striking to listen back to the very basic pastiche of the band's first album and see how far they've come, exploring different corners of funk and soul, experimenting with different meters and very complex arrangements. The trumpet in the intro to "Better Things" plays around with the vocal melody with a jazzy slyness that hits even harder when Jones follows it up by taking it over. Elsewhere, the horns and stormy backing track on "Money" save it from being a pretty typical soul rumination on being down and out, while Jones grabs the surfish guitar and bounding beat of "She Ain't a Child No More" and runs with them, delivering a commanding vocal to which her bandmates dutifully respond.

It all comes together to make an album that stands up as a varied and well-sequenced work, and as a collection of songs you can scatter through a shuffle and dig just as deeply. It's nice to hear the band really stretch themselves and develop the drama and tumult of songs like "I'll Still Be True" and "The Game Gets Old", which you can really hear the band putting its creative all the way into. This record hardly needs to be recommended to soul fans, but even if revisitations of older music styles aren't usually your thing, I Learned the Hard Way is worth digging up.

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