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Bettye LaVette: Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

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Veteran soul singer Bettye LaVette comes full circle with these 13 inspired British Invasion covers reworked in a classic, American R&B style. LaVette’s spooky 2008 revival of The Who ballad “Love Reign O’er Me,” reworked for the Kennedy Center Honors program saluting the band, sparked Interpretations, and the live recording still has the power to astonish. She presses every fiber of her being into service for these songs about love’s power to torture and heal, over a rising and falling sea of wailing guitar, piano, and organ. LaVette also delivers a bittersweet version of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed,” reborn as a symphony of hurts-so-good devotion. She pulls big drama afresh from the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” creep-crawling and majestic; Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love,” bruised and bluesy; and Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy,” edged with ghostly Delta guitar incantations. Six-string declarations and warm electric piano underpin a version of “Don’t Let Me Misunderstood” that comes off as a veiled threat. The Rolling Stones’ “Salt of the Earth” is slowed down and slightly revised to reference HIV, and LaVette even recasts a Lennon-McCartney gem with a gospel-stomping take on “The Word.”