Jeff Beck's emotive electric guitar has always had a voicelike quality. So it's fascinating to hear the ex-Yardbird bounce off singers here. Beck brings out the nasty in U.K. soul mama Joss Stone, and he does an operatic pas de deux with coloratura soprano Olivia Safe; on a wordless "Corpus Christi Carol," he conjures the swoops of late singer Jeff Buckley, who famously covered it. But orchestral arrangements lard things down, and the variety, while admirable, makes for a scattered listen. Its best bits recall the laser focus of his 1975 classic, Blow by Blow, which is always worth revisiting.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"