Ray Charles's first album in seven years finds the R&B legend's piano and tonsils plonked in a studio with various synthesisers and drum machines, with hip-hop beats adding licks of modern paint. It is a risky idea - and it results in the musical equivalent of surrounding Picasso with a team of cowboy painters and decorators.
Chief musical criminal is Charles's long-time songwriter Billy Osbourne, who has at least compensated by penning some killer tunes. Strip away the sonic emulsion and cheesy Shakatak synthesisers, and Charles is in wonderfully playful, sexy mood on I Just Can't Get Enough of You: "Twenty-four hours seems like a minute, when we are making love" (24 hours? At 71? Good grief). At the opposite end of the album's emotional spectrum, Mother pays exquisitely moving tribute to the parent who helped the singer overcome his blindness (tissues are essential for the lines: "I surely do miss my mother/ Doesn't matter how old I grow"). It is the most incongruous moment in this instrumentally botched job.
