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Album: Anthony Hamilton <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Ain't Nobody Worryin', SONY BMG

Andy Gill
Friday 27 January 2006 01:00 GMT
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Anthony Hamilton's fourth long-player builds on the foundations of his million-selling breakthrough release - 2003's Comin' From Where I'm From - and the belated release last year of his lost Soulife album. Which is to say that Ain't Nobody Worryin' rarely strays very far from the proven verities of classic Seventies Southern soul - things such as the focus on social issues; the gospel underpinnings displayed in "Pass Me Over"; the twitchy clavinet and fatback funk groove of "Sista Big Bones", his paean to the larger lady; and the way Hamilton slips into sweet falsetto for "Never Love Again", a song about male vulnerability ("Once hurt, he'll never give in, it's hard for him to trust again"). As before, Hamilton draws deeply from the wells of Womack and Withers, although the balmy sunshine haze of "Southern Stuff" more accurately recalls the Isleys of "Summer Breeze" - and that's never a bad thing. Elsewhere, the Withers influence is particularly noticeable on the title track, a Medicaid lament for the poor and homeless, and in "Preacher's Daughter", a tribute to a girl whose problems are overlooked because her minister father is "too busy saving souls/ To realise he lost one of his own."

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Southern Stuff', 'Sista Big Bones', 'Preacher's Daughter'

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