Kenny Lattimore: 'Timeless'

After six years of touring and recording together, Kenny Lattimore and his wife, Chante Moore, have resumed their solo careers. Chante dropped her new album, Love The Woman, in June 2008 via Peak Records, and now it's her husband's turn. On Sept. 9, 2008, Kenny dropped an album of sophisticated cover songs called Timeless via Verve Records. On Timeless, Kenny remakes classic songs that were originally by a wide variety of artists, including Stevie Wonder, the Beatles, Al Green and Elton John. The verdict: it's a good, but not great, album. It's solid, but not spectacular.

If you're hearing these cover songs for the first time, Kenny's renditions of such classic songs like Marvin Gaye's "That's The Way Love Is," the Beatles' "And I Love Her" and the Norm Connors classic "You Are My Starship," will likely tickle your ear, since he has a pleasant, soothing voice that's strong, but not overly forceful. His deft singing touch is apparent on the opening track, a version of Al Green's "Something," as well as the next two songs, Jeff Buckley's "Everybody Here Wants You" and the aforementioned quiet storm mainstay "You Are My Starship." Likewise, his begging and pleading on a new version of Otis Redding's "I Love You More Than Words Can Say," is also a thrill.

But the problem is that although Kenny's versions of the 11 songs are solid, in each case they fail live up to the original versions. Even Kenny's more devoted fans will have to admit that he's no Al Green or Otis Redding, but by covering their songs on this album, he directly offers his voice to be compared to theirs. And although Kenny's got definite skills, he's not an elite vocalist and this album makes that perfectly clear. Even on his covers of songs that weren't well known for soaring vocals, such as his version of the Beatles "And I Love Her," is flawed. Not just by his somewhat flat, uninspired vocals, but also by the instrumentation, which is bland to point of sounding like elevator music, or a karaoke tune.

That's not to say that Timeless, is a bad album: the choice of songs is varied and each track obviously has some personal significance to the singer. And as mentioned above, if you haven't heard the original versions of the songs, you'll likely be pleased by Kenny's versions, since he does a solid job remaking them. But if you do hear and like these songs, then do yourself a favor - track down the originals. You may like them even more.