Album: Frazey Ford, Obadiah (Nettwerk)

You may be familiar with the Be Good Tanyas: charming, literary all-female Canadian retro-folkies.

Frazey Ford is the one who sounds as if she has blancmange in her pants. Tremulous. And this is a tender (often incomprehensible) essay in the poetics of Southern soul, as shaped in the fug of, say, Willie Mitchell (see Solomon Burke review), Al Green, Ann Peebles 'n' all. It lacks raunch, of course, but that doesn't mean Ford's missing the point. She's just interested in a different point. A chilly, soft, wobbly, sweet one.