Ann Peebles: Straight From The Heart - 1971

 

Now for Ann Peebles' second (or maybe third) album.
 
Slipped, Tripped And Fell In Love is exactly what you would expect - big, deep, throbbing bassline, fatback drums, killer soulful Stax-style guitar and Ann's gritty vocal. Boil them all together and you get one hell of a southern soul recipe. 

Ann is getting a touch of that world-weariness with regard to relationships now that many female soulstresses did in the early seventies and Trouble, Heartache And Sadness perfectly represents that state of mind. That darn no-good man done me wrong once more. At the risk of repeating myself, something I often do, I have to say that the sound on this album is out there. Just listen to that tasty, deep bass come rumbling into What You Laid On Me. We hear a heartbroken, wronged woman railing against her man and other predatory women against a funky, dirty musical backdrop. Horns and wah-wah guitar. No lush strings here. This is classic seventies gutsy, kick-ass dirty soul. 

Get a load of the pounding, horn-driven southern funk and conga-driven rhythm on Somebody's On Your Case or the soulfully expressed sentiments on the inspirational How Strong Is A Woman. Ann gets somewhat bitter on the brooding I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home. She's had a belly-full and she wants to take it out on somebody else. Best keep out of her way, then. Now, though, it's maudlin guilt all the way on the sad and soulfully beautiful I've Been There Before. "Don't it make you wanna get up and walk away" questions Ann over more glorious gospel backing. Fuck me, Ann has got soul. Not to put too fine a point on it! She's still only twenty-four. She could be singing as a woman in her forties. 

I Pity The Fool has a seriously deep backing and another hard as nails vocal. 99 Pounds weighs just as much as its title would suggest in its quintessential soul-funkiness. Ann sounds like a female Otis Redding. Check out that Stax-y, Steve Cropper-ish guitar break as well. 

To close down affairs Ann informs us that I Take What I Want. She wants her man and she's gonna get him. About time too after all that trauma. Yet again, Ann has delivered the goods musically, however.

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