Tom Jones lives a life of adversity. How does one continue producing music for a career known mainly for its significance to the fictional life of Carlton Banks? Despite sporting a massive discography and more youth-oriented songs, such as 1999's Sex Bomb,"" Jones' tryst with popularity has been fickle at best. In 24 Hours, Jones' latest and 30th full-length album, the crooner shows his perfected organization of studio musician accompaniment but falls short trying to galvanize his career yet again.
His first track, ironically entitled ""I'm Alive,"" is a promising start to the album. After the passably energetic guitar and horn intro, Jones' voice rips through like a lion teaching his grandchildren how to roar with dentures.
On ""We Got Love,"" Jones reverts to his characteristically smooth lady-persuading vocals, but the accompaniment of echoing strings and a just-tolerable bossa nova beat keep up the pace. And no matter how much Jones tries to associate himself with the Stax Reocrds period, the canned backing vocals and horns on ""Give A Little Love"" take away any credibility of Motown roots.
After the cheese-oozing, trance-inducing
plea, ""The Road,"" ""In Style and Rhythm"" snaps the album back to its original upbeat tempo but adds a twist with shuffling drums, forced-funk keyboards and sci-fi sound effects.
Next is ""Sugar Daddy,"" which Jones readily admits is a joke song. When a singer is 68, a line like ""I've got sexual ambition"" tends to be less titillating than viscerally shocking to its listeners. Jones makes up for it, though, with the line, ""Holy Schmoly! / I'm a one-man army / Yeah, a one man mob / I'm the McDaddy / You don't send a boy to do a man's job.""
No matter how much boasting Jones can fit into a rhyme scheme, he shows his age and a bit more maturity on ""Seasons"" and ""Never,"" songs that sport the bitter tone of Motown wannabes through bursts of strings and witchy backup vocals.
The album decelerates less predictably than expected over the course of the final three songs. Although ""The Hitter"" is a textbook ballad, Jones' sharp growls blend equal parts Waits and Springsteen to make it the strongest song on the album. Next, on ""Seen That Face,"" Jones inexplicably sounds more like a spaced-out Bowie than any of the soul greats he tries to imitate throughout the rest of the album.
The eponymous track reveals unexpected depth with the help of subtler strings and a shuffling, funerary beat. It ends with the line, ""I had one more minute 24 hours ago."" Here, the sense of urgency Jones has been trying to cover up over the course of the album is finally exposed.
24 Hours presents a kind of temptation different from the vixens of Jones' past work: the Siren call of progress in the face of obsolescence. It's not unusual.
