Paul Thorn – Are You With Me?

The land of southern soul is a strange, murky place. It’s steamy and dark, although often dimly lit. Window shades are permanently pulled (the better for telltale silhouettes), the bedding is always rumpled, one end of a phone call is always in a public booth, and only the odd men out use front doors.

Its language is needful, manipulative, desperate and elusive; Bill Clinton might as well have been O.V. Wright or ZZ Hill when he fumbled with what the definition of “is” is. The likes of Dan Penn, Donnie Fritts and Eddie Hinton speak it fluently.

Tupelo, Mississippi, artist Paul Thorn and his writing partner Billy Maddox are bona fide masters of the lingo, but while Thorn’s previous three studio discs found the high-octane belter collating a variety of roots-rock and gospel treats amid the soul nuggets, the new Are You With Me? shuttles strictly on a red-eye from Muscle Shoals to Memphis.

Equipped with a powerful, agile rasp that bites somewhere between Joe Cocker and Paul Carrack, Thorn can play rough, yet the bulk of these exemplary, in-the-tradition originals strut over pristine, midtempo backdrops embroidered by soaring female vocals, sassy horns, crisp, stinging guitars, and swirling keyboards — all couched on a big, fat bottom.

Radio long ago barricaded its gates against this kinda stuff, but true soulmen like Paul Thorn have always slipped in the back way anyhow. Let him in.