The title’s missing ‘s’ aside, AMS is as perfect a collection of gospel deity Mahalia Jackson’s as you’ll find. You’d have to be pretty militantly atheistic to not, just for a second, believe in God’s existence when listening to Jackson’s paralyzingly gorgeous vocal work. There’s not a friend like Jesus, and there might never be a voice like Jackson again. Outside of James Blake’s (let’s face it, painfully white) adaptation of gospel, some genius really needs to initiate a re-imagining of the genre.
