Joan Osborne

The new documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown is built around a reunion of the sharp backup band that played on many Tamla-Motown-Gordy-Soul hits of the 1960s. One of the unlikely contemporary artists who appeared in that film was Joan Osborne, whose big 1996 hit, “One of Us,” was a postmodern gospel song of sorts. This album of soul and R&B covers is Osborne’s comeback, and it’s a gutsy move. Many of these songs are so identified with an artist (Aretha Franklin’s “Think,” the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” and Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine”) or label (such Motown standards as the title track and “Smiling Faces Sometimes”), that the originals cannot be improved upon. But Osborne not only reinvents them, but also gets inside them, slows them down or speeds them up, and ultimately makes them her own. And that, friends, is the mark of a truly gifted interpretive artist. A keeper.