Try before you buy: The twinkle hasn’t left Tom Jones and neither has his voice, which is still a force of nature that can suddenly turn to finesse
Tom Jones Surrounded By Time Out Friday
There are plenty of senior citizens in pop, but not many who face up to their age. Tom Jones seemed in denial too, until, aged 68, he stopped dyeing his hair. Now here he is at 80, making an album called Surrounded By Time, which includes a song called I’m Growing Old.
It’s quite unusual.
‘I’m growing dimmer in the eyes,’ he sings. But the twinkle hasn’t left him and neither has his voice, which is still a force of nature that can suddenly switch to finesse. If albums were all about singing, this one would get five stars.
There are plenty of senior citizens in pop, but not many who face up to their age. Tom Jones (above) seemed in denial too, until, aged 68, he stopped dyeing his hair
For a decade Jones’s producer has been Ethan Johns who, like most musicians, is young enough to be his child. (His actual son, Mark Woodward, is 64.) They have a simple method: find a folk or soul song, strip it down and let that voice do the rest.
On about half of Surrounded By Time, this works a treat. Jones finds the feeling in material ranging from Bob Dylan (One More Cup Of Coffee, 1976) to Michael Kiwanuka (I Won’t Lie, 2012).
Bobby Cole’s I’m Growing Old, offered to Jones a little prematurely in 1972, proves well worth the wait.
Then he ruins it by tackling something that doesn’t suit him at all. A track called Talking Reality Television Blues looks good on paper, given his experience on The Voice, until you find him speaking the lyrics, which is a waste of a great instrument, over a backing track that reeks of Radiohead.
Tom Jones is many things, but Thom Yorke he is not.
The only new song also misfires. Entitled Samson And Delilah, it’s a plod through the Bible story that makes you wonder ‘Why, why, why?’. So my advice is to try before you buy – but don’t miss Sir Tom’s next tour, which starts, pandemic permitting, on July 23.