01. Mentality
02. Strength To Survive
03. Everything Changes
04. Don t Worry
05. Tell me
06. It´s Not Too Late
07. Gone Today
08. Let You Go
09. Not Done Yet
10. To Slow Down
11. Be With Me Now
12. When We Were
13. Gone Today (acoustic 2010)
- Name: SOJA
- Cd Name: Strength To Survive
- For Promotional Only
- Genre: Reggae
- Released: 31 Jan. 2012
- Born: United States
- Resident: Santa Barbara,California
- Label: ATO Records
- Produced:
- Recording at Mixing:
- Mastering:
- Track: 12
- No Download.
- Strength to Survive (Download)
- Size:
- Size: 153.70 mb
- Playtime: 52.41 min.
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- Soundcloud.
- LastFm.
- AllMusic.
- ReverbNation.
- SOJASite.
- YouTube.
- Wikipedia.
Over the course of nearly 15 years, SOJA (aka Soldiers of Jah Army)
have been quietly turning into one of the most solid and accomplished
reggae bands in the U.S. Despite an undeniably powerful instrumental
sound, their progress was slowed early on by bandleader Jacob Hemphill's vocal affectations, which explicitly evoked Bob Marley and made him sound both annoying and somewhat ridiculous.
Over time those tendencies have faded somewhat, and Hemphill has started to come into his own as a singer. His voice is still thin and weedy (he sounds more like Apple Gabriel than Bob Marley
these days), but the fake Jamaican accent is less pronounced and his
phrasing and delivery have matured. So has his ability to write hooks,
and it's the quality of the songs on Strength to Survive
(more than the singing of them) that makes this such a powerful album.
"Gone Today," "Everything Changes," the slow and smoky groove of "It's
Not Too Late" -- these are songs that anyone would be proud to have
written, and the band's tough, tensile groove has only gotten stronger
over the years.
Missteps? Yes: the two non-reggae acoustic numbers at
the end of the program (one of them a misbegotten version of "Gone
Today") expose all the worst things about Hemphill's
vocal style, and neither of them is especially compelling in this
stripped-down and groove-free format. Skip those last two numbers,
though, and you've got one of the best American reggae albums of the
year.
