Aretha Franklin: Tan Years of Gold Atlantic.

I kinda enjoy this—the cutesy title aside. What they really should have done was stamp it: 'Warning. Not for the faint hearted". Noteworthy omissions from this slickly-packaged collection selected from Mrs Franklin's Atlantic catalogue are her two sizeable English hits "I Say A Little Prayer", and "The Weight".

It's a remarkably cohesive compilation ranging from those early classics that—practically single-handedly—rewrote soul music to the fuller (and somewhat same-y) material of her later years, the likes of which hasn't been seen since that posthumous Otis Redding double set. Not for nothing did her spirit animate so much of Dylan's Tarantula.

—Patrick O Dea

Record Kindly supplied by Colin Morris Records, 54 The Terrace