Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings / Joan Osborne / Jill Scott / Alice Smith/ Angie Stone

Stone’s The Art Of Love And War (on a reconstituted Stax Records) and Scott’s The Real Thing feature dramatic first singles that provide appealing answers to the question, “What is soul…in the 21st century?” Stone’s shimmering and resilient “Baby” is a “tag-team” with old-school star Betty Wright, and Scott’s “Hate On Me” is a thunderous anthem of self-liberation. The Real Thing may well collect the literate Scott’s finest work to date, especially the acoustic smoke of “Celibacy Blues” and her smooth seduction-via-product-placement, “Crown Royal On Ice”.

Stone is, this time out, just a bit too prone to that perennial neo-soul pitfall — long songs with hook-less melodies. But, particularly when she pushes herself out of midtempo, as on the potential hit “Play With It”, Stone reminds, as does Scott, of what has been most valuable in their work all along: These are grown-ass women with grown-ass women’s bodies and grown-ass women’s concerns. That last matter includes, but is thankfully not limited to, getting their freaks on.

So neo-soul persists. Its most popular recent practitioners, however — John Legend, Adrian, Anthony Hamilton — have learned, like “liberals” and “insurgent country bands,” to call themselves something else. That’s true of Alice Smith, too. Her For Lovers, Dreamers, & Me was one of last year’s best albums and one of the best soul albums in recent memory, but as it was on the smallish BBE label, few people heard it. Now Epic has picked it up for re-release, apparently impressed by smart and slinky tracks such as “Dreams” and the preposterously catchy “Fake Is The New Real”. Smith’s brand of soul music is as neo- as any in the last decade, but without the label.

The current soul revival, then, has been building for awhile. Something seemed to shift in the zeitgeist, though, with the 2002 documentary Standing In The Shadows Of Motown — a tribute to that label’s incomparable studio band, the Funk Brothers — and it did so at the precise moment Joan Osborne reached her crescendo climax to “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted”. Since then, Osborne, formerly best known as the hippy-trippy singer of the mid-’90s smash “One Of Us”, has moved increasingly to place herself in that marvelous queue of blue-eyed soul divas that features the likes of Lisa Stansfield, Teena Marie and Dusty Springfield.

The Springfield catalogue provides the title track to Osborne’s latest, Breakfast In Bed. Her previous effort in the soul vein, 2002’s How Sweet It Is, was more successful — its covers, including a dirge-like “War”, were more daringly re-imagined; the soul feeling in her voice was more obviously inspired by Motown and her frequent collaborators the Holmes Brothers — but Breakfast is a fine successor nonetheless. The album is ripe with savvy picks (Bloodstone’s “Natural High”, the Stylistics’ “Break Up To Make Up”) and a trio of soulful Osborne originals that all but hold their own with the works of her soul music predecessors.

All the women discussed above are worthy of your time. But it falls to Sharon Jones to be, if not the Queen of Soul (that’s still Aretha), then the Queen of the Soul Revival. Jones’ new album 100 Days, 100 Nights is admittedly soul of the most derivative and retro variety. But Jones and the Dap-Kings reproduce the sounds and the soul feeling of Motown and James Brown so flawlessly, with such funky ease and gospel fervor and emotional complexity, that it really doesn’t matter. And as the Dap-Kings, who are to soul now what Marty Stuart’s band the Superlatives are to country — the best in the business — have recently made the most of Amy Winehouse’s thin talents on single-of-the-year candidate “Rehab”, who’s to say what is and isn’t retro right now anyway?

“Oh, the lies you tell to get your taste,” Jones cries, worrying every bitter note. She’s alone and hurting, but she has her Dap-Kings, too. And that is a wonderful, soulful feeling.