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*** Gladys Knight

AT LAST

(Universal)

For those who have ears still to hear — and the patience to give close attention to — one of the giants of the 1960s soul-music era, Gladys Knight’s umpteenth CD offers unforgettable intimacies. Knight has always specialized in advice songs and dramatic pleas, and that’s what she does here. “Grandma’s Hands,” about the things she recalls hers giving and telling her; “Better Love Next Time,” a lovers’ goodbye song; “Just Take Me,” with its fervent romanticism; and “Love Hurts,” a monologue with a message one word at a time — these do not shout or stomp or raise any roofs, as her big hits with the Pips often did. Instead, their careful quiet comforts you even as it confronts.

Knight’s voice was always husky, and so it remains, a big bear-hug presence, but the fierceness of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “If I Were Your Woman” has softened. All the better for her to slow-walk her way through every lyrical nook and emotional cranny of the country tune “Please Help Me I’m Falling”; of “I Said You Lied,” with its gentle rebukes and hurts; and of “Do You Really Want To Know (What Makes Me Fall in Love),” a be-a-man song in which Knight’s vocal shapes every caress and desire that moves her. The lucky suitor whom she addresses can’t possibly not get her meaning.

— Michael Freedberg