by Stewart Mason
Pop-jazz reedsman Nelson Rangell returns with the amiable Soul to Souls, an album evenly split between familiar covers and originals. The standards, including &A Night in Tunisia,& Earl Klugh's &Vonetta,& and Joe Sample's &Free as the Wind,& are mostly pleasant but uninspired; the exception is a lovely recasting of Stevie Wonder's &Send One Your Love& (from his underrated fusion experiment Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants) that features some of Rangell's most haunting and inspired flute playing. The originals blend R&B and pop influences into Rangell's mainstream, smooth aesthetic; as always, his playing is impeccable and the production is pristine, but there's little sense of new artistic ground being broken on Soul to Souls. At its best, the album is a recapitulation of Rangell's talents; at it's worst, it's treading water.