Track Listing

1. Until I See You Again
2. Woman In Me
3. Leopards In The Temple
4. Shifting Times
5. Fortune's Drive
6. Redemption
7. Who Was That Masked Man
8. Interlude Highlands Part I
9. Interlude Highlands Part II
10. I'm Gonna Miss You
11. Maybe I'm Amazed
12. Peace In The Valley
13. Piece Of Clay
14. Burning Bridges

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37197 in Music
• Released on: 1998-04-20
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
For her second solo album, the former Young Disciple opted for a jazzier,more soulful (more "live") feel than on her 1994 debut True Spirit, all the better to showcase her breathy, sultry, strikingly powerful voice with. It's a voice that has quite some pedigree behind it--60s soul belter Vicki Anderson was her mother, and the London diva is also step-daughter to Vicki's fellow JB, Bobby Byrd. And she does them proud. As might be expected from its title, Blessed Burden is an album with a strong spiritual bent, from a scouring reading of "Peace In The Valley", through the Paul Weller-influenced "Burnin' Bridges" and the thoughtful "Leopards In The Temple". One to rank alongside Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation Of.... --Everett True

Customer Reviews

Criminally overlooked soulful effort....
Former Young Disciples vocalist and daughter of Vikki, Carleen Anderson's profile as a solo artist has never been high.
1998's "Blessed Burden" should really have been the album to break her. Collaborations with Paul Weller and Mick Talbot as well as some ex-Galliano musicians should in theory have delivered the goods.
There are some excellent tracks on here. "Peice Of Clay" is a quality soulful preach and "Leopards In The Temple" is an exquisite peice of soul-gospel sung beautifully.
Anderson's version of "Maybe I'm Amazed" and Van Morrison's "Who Was That Masked Man?" are also very accomplished.
What lets it down is the stodgy "Fortunes Drive" which at times sounds a little cacophonous and a few forgettable funk-lite tracks.
This album deserved to sell better than it did and Anderson deserves a higher profile than she gets.

A disappointment
After her truly great "Soul Providence" album I decided to go back in time and check out more material of this great songstress. Unfortunately this CD didn't satisfy me, it lacks soul and evokes a country-rock feel of the early 70ies reminding me of Janis Joplin in parts. The rock instrumentation makes me feel uneasy. Skip this one in favor of "Soul Providence".

Indeed a record that surpasses The Miseducation of Ms. Hill
'Technically and Emotionally Carleen Anderson's voice knows no bounds', I once read and this album only goes further in proving the point. Hugely underrated when it comes to sales, Carleen is one of the most powerful and emotional performers ever to record, rivalling those artists such as Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday and her own Godfather James Brown.

Very much a live sounding album, it begins the impressive and meaningful Fortune's Drive before moving on to the beautiful single, Woman In Me, the spiritual, Peace In The Valley, and the uptempo stomper, Redemption. This is followed by Carleen's first attempts at covers on albums with her incredible adaptation of Paul McCartney's Maybe I'm Amazed and the slightly less impressive Who Was The Masked Man.

However, things get better again with the obviously-Paul Weller-penned, Burning Bridges, and the tempo slows again for the wonderful, Piece Of Clay.

The next three songs are not quite as wonderful as the rest of the album, but listened to as individual tracks they are still very strong, particularly Shifting Times...

The highlight of the LP comes at the very end though, with Leopards In The Temple - lyrically, emotionally, musically, one of the best tracks Carleen has ever written. It concludes what can only be called an all-time classic album - which somehow manages to surpass the almost-equally fantastic 1994 album, True Spirit.