Chris Cornell

★★★ No One Sings Like You Anymore, Vol.1 INTERSCOPE. CD/DL/LP

Soundgarden/Audioslave singer’s posthumous coverversions album gets belated physical release.

Though his contemporary Axl Rose thought him the finest rock singer of his generation, grunge/alt-rock icon Chris Cornell liked to tap other genres. Scream, his 2009, Timbaland-produced solo album said as much, and so does this eclectic covers set, recorded in 2016. If John Lennon’s Watching The Wheels, here recast as a buoyant acoustic strummer, follows the golden-rule of reinvention, not replication, the standout is a take on Nothing Compares 2 U, Prince’s adroit vocal melody a showcase for Cornell’s affectionate, bluesier reading. Elsewhere, Harry Nilsson’s Jump Into The Fire is toughened-up and much abridged, ELO’s Showdown gets thumping drums and sweet falsetto notes, and Stay With Me Baby, an impassioned 1966 single for Philadelphia-born soul-singer Lorraine Ellison, provides Cornell with a closer of thrilling, Joe Cocker-like oomph.