No Ordinary World
Possessed of one of the most distinctive voices of the rock era, Joe Cocker has largely made his mark by attacking other artists' songs with his shredded vocal grace and oft-inscrutable phrasing. Ironically, Cocker's has sustained his career in the 1980s and '90s largely by taming his throaty, raw power in service of increasingly tame balladry and hired-gun film work. Executive-produced by Cocker and longtimeTina Turnercollaborator Roger Davies, this album soldiers on in that slick, perhaps overly professional tradition. The covers here range from pleasantly surprising (Leonard Cohen's dourly dramatic "First We'll Take Manhattan") to the superfluous (Steve Winwood's "While You See a Chance"), while the middle-of-the-road dynamics of the originals fare a bit better. Recent Cocker fans should be pleased, since his vocal prowess remains undiminished. It's his soul that seems to have mellowed; one can't help but wonder what Cocker might produce if he returned to the R&B; grit of his roots.--Jerry McCulley