A Nickel and a Nail and Ace of Spades

The best album that Hi Records never released — this stunning Willie Mitchell-produced, Hi Rhythm Section/Memphis Horns-backed LP actually came out on Texas-based label Back Beat — O.V. Wright’s A Nickel and a Nail and Ace of Spades is as good as Memphis soul gets without Isaac Hayes or Al Green getting involved. Not that O.V. sounds much like either of them anyways — instead, he’s one of the great interpreters of frustration and agony, a voice like a vise grip that he often pushes past its limits into a rough-grit intensity. The two cuts that give this album its title are good dichotomous examples: “A Nickel and a Nail” is the kind of pained down-and-out lament that makes “The Thrill Is Gone” sound like bubblegum pop in comparison, and the deceptively upbeat “Ace of Spades” is peak I have had it expressiveness from someone who’s learned so much from heartbreak he’s figured out how to wield it like a pro. And when he gets lowest-of-the-low — the abyssal misery of “I Can’t Take It” or the love-on-trial lament “Eight Men, Four Women” — it can surprise you just how infectious devastation can feel.