Tom Jones’s 2010 album, Praise and Blame, kickstarted the veteran’s late-career transition from hip-swivelling lothario to sombre, gravitas-laden balladeer via a series of stripped-down confessionals. There are plenty more of those here, as Pontypridd’s finest, now 75, takes on songs by the likes of Willie Nelson and Hank Williams. In Gillian Welch’s stark, surging electronic Elvis Presley Blues, Jones addresses his late friend’s death, “all alone in a long decline”. Elsewhere, though, he is back in more playfully retro mood as he flits from swaggering rock’n’roll to finger-pickin’ country. He brushes off the Rolling Stones’ Factory Girl and finds his unlikely inner Jim Morrison in Los Lobos’ Everybody Loves a Train; I Wish You Would even suggests how Led Zeppelin might have sounded if they had been fronted by a big-lunged Welshman. The lothario isn’t entirely gone – Sonny Boy Williamson’s Bring It Home almost certainly doesn’t refer to groceries – and as an album it’s slightly uneven, but Jones clearly has plenty of gas left in the tank.
