Long-time Al Green producer Willie Mitchell is behind the board for Roy Young’s Memphis, which updates his Memphis soul sound without making it slick. Mitchell frames the songs with a low, insistent bass, and a piano, leaving Young’s urgent, intimate voice plenty of room. Horns, drums and backing vocals are accents, but Young is the star.

Young has performed in England, Europe and Israel for most of his career, and his Jamaican birth only occasionally comes out, most obviously in the island-influenced “Half Past July.” Otherwise, the album sticks to the classic soul verities—feeling and its passionate expression. He, like Green, is also at his best when the artful touches are at a minimum. His version of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” builds beautifully and simply, and a simple B3 organ with a Leslie speaker evokes a world of atmosphere for “So Strange.” Still, like Green, he sounds like a man with something on his mind, and the songs only occasionally sound like performances.