This team-up of two R&B veterans packs a potent punch, with Otis Clay and Johnny Rawls each bringing a lifetime of immersion in deep soul to the table. Soul Brothers finds Clay and Rawls trading lines and pooling their gravitas like a modern-day Sam & Dave. But this is no retro-fetishizing project. In addition to their bold, brass-punctuated covers of Dave Mason's "Only You Know and I Know," the Jimmy Ruffin classic "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," and the Tyrone Davis hit "Turn Back the Hands of Time," these soul sultans bring their passion-soaked pipes to bear on classy contemporary material, much of it self-penned.