Mockingbird album cover
Mockingbird

Kendra Morris

2013
Wax Poetics Records

Here’s a fun little miracle: a covers album that purported to test the limits of what kinds of music could be reworked into soul revivalism, and then revealed that those limits didn’t even exist. Can “Black Hole Sun” be moody, spacious, delicately yet intensely sung psychedelic soul? Whew, can it. What about “Karma Police”? Oh, that’s easy. Yeah, but “Ride the Lightning”? It was made for it. Kendra Morris shines as a sly-voiced singer-songwriter paying iconoclastic, genre-agnostic homage to a half century’s worth of pop canon from Bowie to Timberlake. Whether the source material’s an “of course”-level gimme (“Miss You” retrofitted for a pre-disco Mayfield milieu) or a confounding transformation (“I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” as a borderline-menacing funky death trip), it knocks the dust off even the most familiar pop and rock standards.

Nate Patrin

Who also suggested

If you select your preferred streamer here, we will save your preference and link to that platform if possible. This can always be changed in the Settings menu.

Apple Music

If you’d like to prioritize Bandcamp if available, tap the Bandcamp logo.

Since some albums are only available on one service, you’ll still see logos for other services if the album is only available on that service.

Next