Soul/R&B

Van Morrison's gift was the ability to cop a religious experience from the little stuff--the shade of a redwood tree; Jackie Wilson on a staticky radio; a glass of water. Oh, and women--not for nothing was his first hit (with Irish rockers Them) an elision: Gloria, the chick, and gloria, the great hosanna.

That spiritual suggestibility came off rather muted on Thursday night, when Morrison brought his Astral Weeks revival tour to DAR Constitution Hall. Clad in his signature pinstripe suit, tinted sunglasses, and the fedora that's been glued to his head for the past decade, Van addressed the audience only once--at the end, to thank the band--and otherwise seemed more concerned with PA glitches than with, say, his immortal soul.

The Deal: The Godfather of Funk hits Charlotte for a three-hour tour of classic P-Funk and some newer hits.

The Good: If you wanted the funk, you were in the right place. Clinton hit the stage around 10:30 p.m. and the band kept going for roughly three hours. Sure, most of the stuff you'd expect was played -- "Give Up the Funk," "Somethin Stank and I Want Sum," "Bounce 2 This," and "Flashlight." He also played the newer song "Hard as Steel" from TAPOAFOM.

A message simply titled "the new-ness" accompanies six new songs unceremoniously posted on Van Hunt's MySpace page today -- for a limited time only:

OK, look, I'm not trying to be insensitive here. Jennifer Hudson has gone through a terrible tragedy that no one would wish on anyone, and did an incredible thing by showing up at the Super Bowl and being able to perform. It takes courage to do that.

Now, let's be real. She's not a singer -- she's a screamer/oversinger. It starts out ok, but then it just gets loud. I said it during her days on American Idol, I said it when she was in Dreamgirls and I'll say it now:

In what could turn out to be the best or worst PR move ever brewed up by a brain trust of managers, agents and consultants, soulful singer-actress Jennifer Hudson comes out of hiding and gives her first performance since the triple homicide that took the lives of her mother, brother and young nephew less than four months ago. At Super Bowl XLIII. In front of millions of Americans across the country and a live audience of nearly 70,000. With just her and the microphone, singing the national anthem.

Will she get to "the bombs bursting in air" and flash to her family getting shot to death, and breakdown, right there, in the middle of Raymond James Stadium? Or will she belt out a mournful but magnificently moving cry to the heavens, and touch the heart of every sentimental schmuck who's watching, and bring said schmucks to tears?

About halfway through a Robert Randolph concert, the slide wunderkind kicks his chair back, throws his feet in the air, and starts spinning. This is the cue for the rest of the band to go into double time, and--if it's 12:01 a.m. on New Year's day--it's the cue for three million females to teeter onstage for the dubious privilege of having champagne sprayed at them. For a brief moment, the 9:30 Club feels like Cancun in mid-March: the jam disintegrates, replaced by awkward, arrhythmic dancing.

Then the ladies evacuate and the Randolphs get back to putting on the best live show in the country.

Raphael Saadiq and Dr. John are both on tour at present, peddling different brands of regressively delightful music to packed, loyal audiences. The Doctor (Mac Rebennack, to get technical) and Saadiq (né Wiggins) wear their influences on their sleeves and dress in full-on vintage: Rebennack in voodoo regalia, Saadiq in a chickadee-yellow suit and oversize horn-rims.

The distinction, of course, is that the Saadiq's throwback pose is provisional; the Doctor's is dynastic.

It probably wasn't intentional, but Phoebe Snow's opening song at Tampa Theatre on Wednesday night, "Standing On Shaky Ground," was acutely autobiographical. She turned in a spirited, funky rendition of the tune, but the subtext was that Snow, in fact, is standing on shaky ground, and she's not doing anything to conceal it.

This coming Saturday, her daughter Valerie would've turned 33. But Valerie died of a sudden brain hemorrhage last March. This was Snow's only child, who was born severely brain-injured and never was able to speak. Two people were never more in love, and Snow has not hidden her pain and desperation.

Every one of her shows is a tribute to Valerie, and the singer talked extensively about her late daughter on stage, at times fighting back tears. (And sometimes the tears won. Snow at one point asked if anyone in the audience had a tissue, and three people rushed forward.)

That was the underpinning for the master vocalist's first Tampa Bay performance in many a year. While her four-piece band backed her ably, and Snow showed off extraordinary chops and feeling, there was never a sense of celebration about the night. Most every one of the ardent fans in the half-filled theater knew Snow's story, and they were rooting for her. But a sense of sadness hung over the proceedings, which was certainly poignant, but was also at times lugubrious.

So, this is my last post for Listen.com. I figured I'd wrap this up with that staple of the nerdy music journalist: the year end list!

John Legend is known for making music that goes straight to your heart -- or the heart of the one you love. It's got a sense of passion in it that makes you drop what you're doing and want to start making out like time's standing still. He hasn't lost that feeling, but he's expanding his horizons on his latest release, Evolver.

The title tells the story -- Legend is evolving the sound of his music to create something broader, something to round out a live setlist and pack arenas. That's not to say he's lost the sex-appeal -- "Before you get into the shower/ Before you worry about your hair/ Baby give me one more hour/ I want you to stay right there" he sings on "Good Morning."

Outside of those ballads, Evolver introduces another side of Legend that includes a bit of reggae -- "No Other Love" -- and funk -- "Green Light." He says the ballads are usually the easy part when he's writing. "It's pretty easy for me to go in that direction, so I don't have to force myself to do that," Legend says by phone during a day off in Detroit. "It happens pretty naturally when the time is right. We definitely have some beautiful ballads on this album, so people won't miss that side of me."

Legend says he always puts pressure on himself to create the best album that he can, but the success of previous albums doesn't add to that. His debut CD, Get Lifted, earned him three Grammys -- Best New Artist, Best R&B Album and Best R&B Vocal Performance. His sophomore effort, Once Again, earned him a second Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance.

"You want to rise to the challenge every album," Legend says. "I felt pressure on the first album. I felt it on the second one. I feel it on this one. It's a matter of me having higher expectations for myself and wanting to make the best music I can possibly make. Each album, I approach it as a challenge. No album is any easier to make."