It’s all leading up to an Irma Thomas/Grimes collab in 2013…

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Brad Shoup: Begging comparison so hard to I’m New Here that I’ve practically got clutchmarks on my pant leg, “Please Forgive My Heart” grafts a deep-soul ballad onto a disembodied electronic tango. A nagging synth scale, skitterish taps, “Wish You Were Here”-style acoustic guitar: it seems Albarn’s trying to confound every last expectation. Womack’s pipes are blown out but strong enough, though not enough to justify a Southern soul-style treatment (which is more about grown-folks entertainment, not this rending stuff). But what’s nice about Southern soul is that its practitioners get to have fun. Good as this is, I’d hate this to be the amber-cast memory Womack fans have of him, just as the dispiriting sight of Johnny Cash in the “Hurt” video became the image of a man whose recording career spanned worlds.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I guess I’d better get ready for a whole lot more venerable soul singers being run through white indie boys’ expensive processors. Although what I really want to see is the black eye one of them sports after proposing one of their glitch-drone backing tracks to Aretha Franklin.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The shrewd designers of YouTube made sure that Gil Scott-Heron’s “I’ll Take Care of You” was the first suggested video to appear on the right margin, and they’re not inaccurate. Like Scott-Heron, Womack’s comeback single boasts a voice blown by age hoarsely trying to signify across the hippest of modern production beds: programmed clicks, drone synth, nagging piano riff. Because he’s a love man from another age, Womack unfortunately has more to lose. The most liberating moment: Womack shouting “woo!” in anticipation of a strummed acoustic guitar.
[5]

Sabina Tang: Look at it this way: the single doesn’t feature Lana Del Rey, and Bobby Womack can still sing. It was barely two years ago that he shot an electric bolt through Gorillaz’s “Stylo,” so we knew that anyhow. If Albarn makes a misstep here in comparison, it’s through over-politeness — that twiddly toy-keyboard melody isn’t adding any punch the vocal demo didn’t already have.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: This isn’t a good fit. Womack’s pain and worldly knowledge is worn and frayed and tattered and immense; the dour, mismatched beats drag him down further than need be. 
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Jer Fairall: Surrounding an old school soul master like Womack with these glitchy electronics should feel like sacrilege, some purist voice inside me cries, but these eerie atmospherics are more cavernous than any live instrument I can think of could produce as effectively. Or at least that’s how it feels until a spare acoustic guitar shows up in the final seconds, leaving him stranded without the simulated pulse of a heartbeat that his words plea so desperately on behalf of, finally isolating him (and us) in a way that is nothing less than startling when it occurs. The sheer dignity, passion and sense of presence with which Womack himself pulls all of this off, owning this new setting as immediately as he begins tinkering with it, negates the need for me to ever hear something like James Blake again.
[8]

Jamieson Cox: It took all of five seconds — five seconds of grit, grain, weathered flesh, and hard-earned experience — for me to slap a hand over my chest and a [9] on this song. I applaud the restraint of the arrangement, because it places that voice right where it should be: at the absolute forefront, radiating warmth and wisdom. I can’t think of another 2012 vocal so immediately affecting and rich with detail. 
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