Soul With a Difference : CHECK LIST ****<i> Great Balls of Fire</i> ***<i> Good Vibrations</i> **<i> Maybe Baby</i> *<i> Running on Empty </i>

*** 1/2WOMACK & WOMACK. “Conscience.” Island. Linda Womack (daughter of the late Sam Cooke) and her husband, Cecil (formerly of the Valentinos, a family unit that also included his brother Bobby Womack), are as soulful a team as you could ask for. Soulful as in earthy, unadulterated, rural R&B; with just enough ‘80s techno-sophistication to make it modern.

The songs here are inspired by stories told to the pair by former miners who once worked with Cecil’s father in the coal fields of Virginia. They’re told from the vantage point of hard-working people who look to selfless love as sanctuary, be it on “MPB (Missin’ Persons Bureau),” a tale about blind denial in the face of disloyalty and desertion, or “Slave (Just for Love),” on which a man works three jobs and commits crimes to prove himself to the woman whose devotion he seeks.

Womack & Womack write lyrics that are dreamy and ambling, almost of a stream-of-consciousness nature. But they are also masters of subtle harmony, their voices interweaving in a hypnotic, caressing fashion. There’s nothing slick about their methods. Their music’s strength is in its simplicity, and in the way it’s bedded in gritty reality rather than in the sleek, heartless and faceless conformity. This is black music with a difference, and it’s closer in pure, soulful spirit to the music Linda Womack’s father was making back in the ‘50s than it is to much of what passes for soul music today.