New Recordings

- Katherine Silkaitis

The Road From Memphis
(Anti ***1/2)

Booker T. Jones is in the midst of a late-career renaissance. The organ-playing maestro won this year's Best Pop Instrumental Album Grammy for Potato Hole, his 2009 collaboration with the Drive-By Truckers. That album, his first in nearly two decades, emphasized his country-soul roots, which reach back to his Stax heyday leading Booker T and the MGs. The Road From Memphis shifts to funk and R&B, with Philly's own the Roots as his backing band. It's a perfect pairing.

"The Hive" and "The Vamp" work deep funk grooves, and Jones plays with judicious restraint; "Harlem House" and "Walking Papers" recall the Meters' New Orleans syncopation. Guests drop in: Motown guitarist Dennis Coffey (who has an impressive new album of his own) and a stellar cast of vocalists - My Morning Jacket's Jim James; Lou Reed; Sharon Jones with the National's Matt Berninger. Jones doesn't need the extra star power, though: He's the master.

- Steve Klinge

7 . . .
(Shanachie ***)

Born into the Minnesota R&B scene of the 1980s, Mint Condition was more like slick but sweat-inducing soul classicists Maze and the Commodores than souped-up neighbors such as the Time and Prince. Mint Condition used some of the synth, slap and tickle that made the Purple One reign, but vocalist Stokley Williams had a rich and passionate tone that bordered on the insistent. The harmonies were silken, the rhythms swinging, and the band's overall musicality earthen and live. There was, and continues to be, something hearty and tactile about Mint Condition's husky sound, a touchy tradition they follow with elegant, funky aplomb on the heel-clicking "I Want It" and the quietly thundering "Can't Get Away." There's a sonic depth to those tunes you simply don't (or can't) hear in nouvelle AutoTuned R&B. That density carries over to the emotionalism of songs such as the woozily mid-tempo "Walk On" and "Not My Daddy" (with singer Kelly Price), with their sad sentiment intact but without treacle. They even have a tune about moms ("Unsung"). Dag. With just a hint of hip-hop swagger to make 7 . . . minty fresh, this is what honest, open, mature soul sounds like. Pay attention.

- A.D. Amorosi

Country/Roots