Artist:     Dana Fuchs

Album:     Love Lives On

Label:     Get Along Records

Release Date:     5.18.18

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Showered with bouquets from critics for her powerful performance as Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway production of “Love, Janis,” Dana Fuchs returns to the role she was born to play, that of a raspy-voiced, spirited blues-rock and soul belter, on Love Lives On. Fuchs says it’s an album of “hope and redemption,” but it also has its vices.

Having also portrayed Sexy Sadie in The Beatles’ jukebox movie “Across the Universe,” Fuchs has a wild time of it in “Backstreet Baby,” the kind of titillating song your mother warned you about. Its sly funk grooves, warm ooze of brass instrumentation and unabashed sexuality taste like forbidden fruit. Meanwhile, the slinky, dark “Sedative” has an element of danger, and her slowly drawn out, seductive version of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,”  adorned with tasteful pedal steel accents and alluring piano, smolders with illicit desire. More often than not, however, Love Lives On advocates for social unity and grace in songs like the upbeat “Same Sunlight” and “Callin’ Angels,”  rich specimens of vintage soul and R&B optimism that find Fuchs channeling Otis Redding, as she does in the watery, wistful break-up ballad “Sittin’ On.”

There is gospel in the air of a confessional “Faithful Sinner,” and “Fight My Way” is a pretty patch of light, mandolin-flecked bluegrass that feels organic and natural. But, the heart of Love Lives On, with its simmering beds of organ, sunny horns and sly, gleaming guitar touches reminiscent of Steve Cropper, belongs to Stax Records. These are troubled times, and Fuchs is a healer, handling the heavy emotional terrain of Love Lives On with honesty and raw passion as one of the great blues singers of her generation. Janis would be impressed.

—Peter Lindblad