Be still my soul. Lawd have mercy. When soul first came out, so many social issues made so many people so PO’d (civil rights, Vietnam, rioting in seemingly every urban area, drug abuse, the specter of nuclear war) that retreating into gospel-sounding soul music was a welcome respite–and a way to constructively vent the emotions that otherwise might drive a man or woman to commit an act that was, er, socially nonconstructive.

Welcome to 2009, the post-Bush wasteland of scorched-earth economics, war and pestilence, terrorism, drug abuse and bad, bad pop music. Along with acts like Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, James Hunter, Amy Winehouse and a fistful of other neo-soul artists my peers have been writing up on Popdose (Ken Shane’s Black Joe Lewis piece is one example), Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens have come to rescue us from the stuff we hear about on the radio and see on the TV and flat-screen computer monitors that just plain don’t make no sense. Like a shooter going off in Binghamptom at a facility whose sole reason for existence was helping noncitizens become citizens here in our land of milk, honey, and executive bonuses. I mean, WTF? (more…)