AMG Review of Feels Like Love

Andrew Hamilton
All Music Guide

It seems like he's been around forever, but this is Willie Clayton's solo debut. The emotive soul singer is still a well-kept secret north of the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Mississippi River. You got a hole in your soul if you can't get into Clayton's heart-on-the-sleeve, gut-wrenching renditions of David Ruffin's "Walk Away From Love" and Bobby Womack's "That's the Way I Feel About You." His resonant, razor-edged tenor also does supreme justice to seven originals. To single out a few would be dogging the rest; they're all top-shelf, direct declarations, requests, and whiskey-induced flights in fantasy, of which "Suspended Animation" is but one example.