Reload Tom Jones Attic, 1999 Buy it online Tracks 1: Burning Down the House with The Cardigans 2: Mama Told Me Not To Come with Stereophonics 3: Are You Gonna Go My Way? with Robbie Williams 4: All Mine with Divine Comedy 5: Sunny Afternoon with Space 6: I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone with James Dean Bradfield 7: Sexbomb with Mousse T. 8: You Need Love Like I Do with Heather Small 9: Looking Out My Window with James Taylor Quartet 10: Sometimes We Cry with Van Morrison 11: Lust For Life The Pretenders 12: Little Green Bag with Barenaked Ladies 13: Ain't That a Lot of Love with Simply Red 14: She Drives Me Crazy with Zucchero 15: Never Tear Us Apart with Natalie Imbruglia 16: Baby, It's Cold Outside with Cerys From Catatonia 17: Motherless Child with Portishead Reviewed by Claude Lalumière	In 1988, pop conceptualists The Art of Noise and high-energy crooner Tom Jones collaborated on a cover of Prince's "Kiss." The single, a smash hit, turned The Art of Noise into pop celebrities and gave Tom Jones a kitsch-but-hip cachet no one (except, obviously, the perspicacious The Art of Noise) had yet imagined. Their "Kiss" was simultaneously a high-camp pop explosion and a driven, loving performance. The collaboration, sadly, was a one-hit-wonder affair. Subsequently, The Art of Noise more or less vanished off the music radar and Tom Jones never seemed to cash in on his newfound image... until his turn-of-the-century pop extravaganza, Reload. This album-length follow-up to "Kiss" may have been long in coming but there's no question that it was worth every second of anticipation. All but three of the 17 tracks on Reload follow the "Kiss" formula: Jones teams with another pop artist to cover someone else's song in a performance both campy and passionate. Mousse T. and Van Morrison bring their own songs to the duets and "Looking Out My Window" is a Tom Jones composition featuring the James Taylor Quartet. One thing every track shares, however, is Tom Jones' exuberant love of song. This album oozes infectious fun. Reload opens with a spectacular rendition of the Talking Heads classic "Burning Down the House." Tom Jones doing David Byrne? Yes! Although the album features several of the standards and oldies often found on cover albums (though they rarely sound this fresh and exciting), Jones' daring and eclectic selection also includes songs by the likes of Portishead, INXS, Fine Young Cannibals and Iggy Pop. Reload celebrates Jones' love of the pop song in all its incarnations -- from jazz and soul to rock and triphop -- by showcasing compositions from each of the last six decades (and one traditional). There's not a bad track on this set list, but there are, in addition to "Burning Down the House" with the Cardigans, several outstanding gems. Mousse T.'s funky "Sexbomb" is exactly what the title says. The Pretenders help Jones kick ass in a strangely moving version of Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life." The sweeping grandiosity of Portishead's "All Mine" (with Divine Comedy), the aggressive catchiness of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy" (with Zucchero), the ebulliently chaotic vocal interaction between Jones and Cerys Matthews on Frank Loesser's "Baby, It's Cold Outside"... there is so much to love about the performances on this album. Reload is sexy, vibrant, lush, fun. The cinematic "All Mine" and Portishead-fuelled cover of "Motherless Child" imbue the collection with an unmistakable Bondian aura, making Reload an idealized James Bond (who, like Tom Jones, is another camp icon) soundtrack for a film in which an über-Bond -- combining the best of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan -- indulges in an unprecedented pageant of thrills, adventure, melodrama, seduction and all-around good time. | June 2000 Claude Lalumière is a Blue Coupe magazine contributing editor, as well as a freelance writer, editor, translator and publishing consultant. He owned and ran danger!, Montreal's chart-topping mid-1990s alternative bookstore. His published criticism can be found on his Web site.	Reload opens with a spectacular rendition of the Talking Heads' classic "Burning Down the House." Tom Jones doing David Byrne? Yes! Although the album features several of the standards and oldies often found on cover albums (though they rarely sound this fresh and exciting), Jones' daring and eclectic selection also includes songs by the likes of Portishead, INXS, Fine Young Cannibals and Iggy Pop.