Martin Sexton
's acoustic
singer/songwriter
routine is just one of many flavors here; along with
Motown
-style
R&B
, sweeping
pop
ballads
, gypsy fiddling,
blues
, and
jazz
, there's even a little rapping. The genre jumping works surprisingly well. Producer
Crit Harmon
sequences the switches with sensitivity and class, and gives the set a consistent sound -- warm, spontaneous, grounded in acoustics, deeply soulful. Vocally,
Sexton
handles the stylistic gymnastics with extravagant ease. He'll belt out a tune with all the velvet bombast of
Wonder
, retreat to a
Billie Holiday
warble, ascend to an
Aaron Neville
falsetto, then swagger his way home like
Ray Charles
or
Johnny Popper
. There is, however, a cost for his expanded palette: originality. Such soulful singing is rarely set against a sparse
folk
background (which is often associated with off-key eccentrics like
Bob Dylan
and
Neil Young
). As his band imitates the
soul
masters who influenced his vocals, his act seems less fresh, and stands against somewhat stiffer vocal competition.
has told interviewers that
music tends to speak only to his head ("like a thick novel"), while simpler
music hits him in the gut. His songwriting seems to reflect that he edges away from the urban poetry of his Bostonian peers but toward plain old
, and it's not bad -- his lyrics previously seemed a little overreaching -- but it does make some of the songs on
Black Sheep
a little less interesting than the ones on his 1991 demo tape,
In the Journey
. All of the diversity, though, does make the solo acoustic moments all the more gratifying, spotlighting not only
's sensational singing but also his warm, bass-heavy, rhythmically slick acoustic guitar playing. ~ Darryl Cater