Dame Crusty reviews SealSoul by Seal.

Dame Crusty was rooting through her knicker draw the other day and came across a crumpled £10 note; it was attached to the string of the diamonte encrusted thong I had used when last on holiday.

I had to think for a while how on earth it managed to get there, stuck to some unknown bodily residue. Then I remembered ... a rather forward young man stuck it there the first and only day I wore the aforementioned item as I writhed and undulated my hips on the local beach. He thought I was performing an erotic dance, when in fact I was trying to stop the gusset string cutting through me like a cheesewire.

Anyhoo....I pondered for a while on what I could spend my new found wealth on and then later, in my local Tesco, I came across the new album by Seal; SealSoul.

I bought it and raced home to slide it into my slot and find out what he could do for me.

The first track began, the Sam Cooke classic A Change is Gonna Come. Seal sings this beautifully with all the feeling and sentimentality it deserves; I knew I was in for a something special.

As I listened to this first track I noticed the second was I Can't Stand the Rain. I remembered the last version of this, sung by the legend Tina Turner, so in homage to the icon, I donned my laced leather bodice, my TT hairpiece and 6" black stilettos ready to strut around my bedroom.

The moment arrived but it wasn't the same hard sound as the delightful Miss T's. Instead, it was a more soulful, more funky affair and a perfect choice.

When the third track started, the James Brown standard It's a Man's Man's Man's World, something strange happened to me. As soon as the orchestrated punchy intro started I was blown off my feet onto my faux-fur covered bed. As the maestro sung his heart out, I lapsed into a state of pre-orgasmic joy. My false eyelashes dropped from their fixtures, one by one my false nails pinged from each finger and shot across the room (two just narrowly missing my pussy...luckily he's still young and managed to dodge the projectiles) and my leather laced bodice was magically undone and ripped apart.

I felt violated and dirty.......and I loved it!!!

I lay there for the remainder of the album taking in all the fantastic arrangements by David Foster and marvelled at the way in which Sir Seal's voice and Foster's production blended beautifully.

The interpretation of the old Knock on Wood is well worth a listen and and the tracks Free and If You Don't Know Me By Now suit his velvety voice magnificently.

On his website, Seal mentions that some fans have twisted their tight-arsed noses (Crusty's words not Seal's) up at him for singing cover versions. I would tend to concur with Mr. Seal; his voice is incredible and we deserve to hear him sing some of the collection of other wonderful material from years gone by and artists he admires. This man will become a great - and in a very short space of time - he should not be pigeon-holed into performing one genre of music.

I advise and urge all lovers of soul music to forget about buying Christmas presents for the family and concentrate on buying this album for oneself.