Marc Broussard: SOS: Save Our Soul

Throwback soul man moves forward by going back

Facing the fact that his singing is ahead of his writing, 25-year-old Marc Broussard turns to the soul chapter of the Great American Songbook and lets ‘er rip. Muscling his way through the deep-gut grooves fashioned by partner Calvin Turner, the Louisiana native juxtaposes hits from Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and The Staple Singers with inspired, less obvious selections like Stevie Wonder’s “You Met Your Match,” Al Kooper’s “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know” and—most improbably—“Harry Hippie,” an obscure period-piece once cut by Bobby Womack. Broussard and Turner approach the latter song without irony, and it takes on an elegiac poignancy thanks to a viscerally expressive vocal that rubs like sandpaper against the silk of Turner’s string chart. Broussard isn’t competing with the originals, he’s just singing the hell out of them—or, to paraphrase Marvin, he’s building his whole world around them.