Category: Soul (Page 4 of 11)

Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs: God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise

August 18, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: James Morrison, Ryan Adams, Iron & Wine

When Ray LaMontagne burst onto the scene with Trouble in 2004, it was easy to assume that the album’s slight glossy sheen was the work of producer Ethan Johns, and look forward to a time when LaMontagne had enough clout to put together a collection with the sort of grit that would support and highlight the soulful folk of his unapologetically retro songwriting. Three albums later, LaMontagne has stepped out on his own — but the result, the teasingly down-home titled God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise, is the most mannered and frictionless of his young career.

It didn’t have to be this way. LaMontagne convened a band, christened the Pariah Dogs, for the sessions, helmed by LaMontagne from the comfort of his own studio, and recorded everything live; frustratingly, it’s the songs themselves that lack the essential heat of his primary influences. Where LaMontagne evoked the bucolic soul of Van Morrison’s early ’70s recordings on his debut, he’s steadily retreated to a Laurel Canyon somnolence over time, and God Willin’ finds him mostly willing to simply lay back, unspool his tuneful rasp, and let the pedal steels do all the work.

The lone exception is the opening track, “Repo Man,” which hints at the sort of back porch funk LaMontagne has always seemed to have in him. But from the second track, the lovely “New York City’s Killin’ Me,” through the harmonica-laced closing track, “Devil’s in the Jukebox,” the rest of God Willin’ is curiously flat; it ambles sheepishly, hands in pockets, from plaintive ballad to lukewarm mid-tempo number and back again.

The end result is an album that certainly isn’t bad, but it’s undeniably frustrating. At his best, LaMontagne has always suggested the modern fruition of the seeds sown by rock’s earliest soul explorers; here, he sounds like nothing so much as a pleasant afternoon nap. And like a nap, listening to God Willin’ has its pleasures, but you’re liable to come out of it feeling groggy and a little ashamed that you weren’t doing something more productive with your time. Hopefully, LaMontagne will catch a twinge of that guilt too. (RCA 2010)

Ray LaMontagne MySpace page

Americana, CD Reviews, Folk, Soul

Ethan Johns Ray LaMontagne Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs

Lissie: Catching a Tiger

August 18, 2010 / Scott Malchus

RIYL: Patty Griffin, Brandi Carlile, Kings of Leon

The sign of a great song is that you can’t just listen to it once. The melody gets stuck inside your head and you keep going back for repeated listens — five, 10, sometimes 20 times in a row. The sign of a great album is that it’s full of great songs you can’t stop listening to it no matter how much you tell yourself you should pause and catch your breath. Of course, great albums with great songs take a long time to get through, because you’re continually repeating the first song until you’re finally ready to move on to track two. The process begins all over again until a whole week has passed before you’ve finally gotten through an album that should have only taken an hour. Such is the case with Catching a Tiger, the full-length debut from freckle-faced Midwesterner Lissie, aka Elisabeth Maurus. Words can’t express how wonderful and exciting this album is.

Lissie has a voice that is soulful, aching, and raw; it can do just about anything she commands it to. The opening track is a huge, Tarantino-sized soul song with Italian western overtones called “Record Collector”; here, Lissie brings Duffy to mind, as well as on the splendid ’60s girl group pop-style song “Stranger.” However, as you listen to the album, it becomes obvious very quickly that Lissie is capable of any genre, be it adult alternative (as on the intricately worded, immediately catchy “When I’m Alone”) or blues rock (the heartbreaking “In Sleep,” which features a killer two-minute guitar solo that warps the song up to its bitter end). “Bully” is a slice of ’60s-ish big old pop bombast; “Little Lovin’” a folksy ballad with a strong backbeat that crescendos to a triumphant finish; and “Cuckoo” is just about one of the most perfect reflections of adolescence I’ve heard in ages. When I listen to that particular track I can’t help but think of my young daughter and the formative years ahead of her. I only hope that she can find a song that resonates with her as I’m sure “Cuckoo” will connect with a crop of young girls just becoming young women. By the time the album wraps up with quiet hymn “Oh Mississippi” (co-written with Ed Harcourt), you won’t be thinking of Duffy anymore, but of Patty Griffin, one our generation’s most remarkable and inspiring singers.

Produced by Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Norah Jones, Modest Mouse) and Bill Reynolds of Band of Horses, the songs on Catching a Tiger are arranged like a perfect concert set list. Three powerful uptempo numbers to pull you in, then a slow ballad, followed by a moderately fast song that leads into a couple more high-energy songs before another ballad. You get the picture. Catching a Tiger flows like the classic albums we have etched in our minds, the ones we return to time and time again as the years go by. Perhaps this is the one record your children will claim as their own and recall some 10 to 15 years from now? While each and every song is produced to superlative effect, with beautifully layered harmonies over subtle guitar parts and driving rhythm sections, tying everything together is Lissie’s amazing voice and her heartfelt, truthful lyrics. While there are a slew of female singer-songwriters releasing new albums this year, most of them seem to get stuck in one mode, primarily the type of atmospheric ballads you hear playing in the background on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Lissie, like the aforementioned Griffin and the exceptional Brandi Carlile, challenges herself on each song, using her gifted vocals for greatness. She knows when the song requires her to hold back, and when it requires her to belt it out. And when she does belt it out, my God, it can be chilling. If I don’t hear another record this year, I’ll be fine because Catching a Tiger has so much power, beauty and heart that it’s going to take me a while to fall in love with something else. It is most definitely one of the best albums of this year — and possibly years to come. (2010, Fat Possum)

Visit the Lissie MySpace page

Purchase the album through Amazon (seriously, this is a must buy)

Alternative, Americana, CD Reviews, Folk, Rock, Soul

Brandi Carlile Catching A Tiger Duffy Ed Harcourt Kings of Leon Lissie Patty Griffin

The Roots: How I Got Over

July 26, 2010 / Jim Washington

RIYL: Common, Mos Def, De La Soul

The most surprising aspect of the Roots’ excellent ninth studio album How I Got Over is not that it’s something of a downer. Looking at the band’s discography going all the way back to 2004’s The Tipping Point shows a group of guys in a bit of a bad mood, which continued through their next two albums, Game Theory and Rising Down. Their gig on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show, while presumably providing a steady paycheck, has not lightened them up, at least in terms of lyrics and message.

No, what hits you first on the new album is how laid-back and confident they sound while delivering the bad news. The Roots have always drawn on soul and other strands of black music to inform their brand of live instrument-based hip-hop, but this could almost be thought of as their folk album. Guest stars include not just fellow rappers such as Dice Raw, Truck North and P.O.R.N. (none of whom outshine the perpetually slept-on Black Thought), but artists decidedly outside hip-hop circles including Monsters of Folk, Joanna Newsom and the Dirty Projectors. How I Got Over may strike some listeners as a little too mellow at first, but on repeated listens this album is almost guaranteed to grow on you. Black Thought again lives up to his name, relying less on spitting “live rounds that will penetrate a vest” and more on insights that penetrate the mind. And while many of the songs seem like an attempt to catalog as many social ills as possible in rhymes, as the album goes on it picks up in terms of energy and mood. Things culminate with the almost feel-good anthem “The Fire,” an “Eye of the Tiger” for hip-hop heads. (In one of the album’s clever twists, “The Fire” is a collaboration with John Legend, and it follows “Doin’ It Again,” built on a John Legend sample.)

That’s followed up by the straight up ass-kicker “Web 20/20,” a welcome throwback to old-school Roots, and then the album ends with the slow-rolling “Hustla,” which breaks the world down into hustlers and customers. Not the most cheery thought in the world, but what do you want? These are the Roots. They only play happy on TV. (Def Jam 2010)

The Roots MySpace page

CD Reviews, Funk, Hip Hop, Rap, Soul

Headlines How I Got Over How I Got Over CD review The Roots The Roots CD review they only play happy on TV

Stone River Boys: Love on the Dial

July 19, 2010 / Scott Malchus

RIYL: The Vaughan Brothers, Southern Culture on the Skids, Hacienda Brothers, Los Lobos

Guitarist Dave Gonzalez (Hacienda Brothers) and singer Mike Barfield, the core of Austin’s Stone River Boys, came together in 2008 when Gonzalez recruited musicians for a benefit tour to help raise money for his ailing Hacienda Brothers bandmate, singer Chris Gaffney. Gaffney was battling cancer and Gonzalez recruited musicians from Austin’s fertile talent pool, including Barfield, nicknamed “the Tyrant of Texas Funk.” Sadly, Gaffney succumbed to the disease, but the tour continued with proceeds being sent to Gaffney’s widow. Along the way, Gonzalez and Barfield began writing songs and eventually started laying down tracks while on the road. The good karma from the Stone River Boys’ noble gesture is evident as their debut album, Love on the Dial, is one of the most lively collections of music you’ll hear this season. Perfect for barbecues and games of cornhole; or just hanging out with your baby trying to stay cool (or heat things up) on a hot summer night.

A cover of Stephen Bruton’s “Bluebonnet Blues” propels the album forward like a sturdy old Ford and sets the tone of an album that crosses traditional country music with Texas blues and ’60s soul music for a hybrid the Boys like to call country funk. The sound is best exemplified in “Can I Change It,” which blends a Steve Cropper guitar lick with a steel guitar playing like a horn section, and “The Struggle,” which brings to mind the Fabulous Thunderbirds in their ’80s heyday.

Elsewhere, the band adopts more traditional country sounds, such as “Lovers Prison” and the lovely “40 Acres,” a heartfelt lament of times gone by. The highlight of the record may be their cover of the Gerry Goffin/Carole King classic, “Take a Giant Step.” Fusing country, soul and a surf guitar twang, they create a magical, dreamlike song, something you’d expect to hear from Chris Isaak or Los Lobos.

The combination of Barfield’s voice and Gonzalez’s guitar playing have created unique group. Barfield sings with bravado and a sincerity that seems lacking in so much of the slick country music that gets radio airplay. Meanwhile, Gonzalez’s guitar slinging is sharp and economical. When he needs to, he can put on a display of fast fingerwork, but he is such a fine musician that he knows when the song calls for fireworks and when it requires something more subdued. (Cow Island 2010)

Stone River Boys MySpace Page
Click to buy Love on the Dial at Amazon

Americana, Blues, CD Reviews, Country, Funk, Soul

bands from Austin Texas Eat Sleep Drink Music Hacienda Brothers Los Lobos Scott Malchus Stone River Boys The Fabulous Thunderbirds

Foxy Shazam: Foxy Shazam

June 9, 2010 / James B. Eldred

RIYL: Queen, Meat Loaf, Mike Patton, Epic Facial Hair

There’s a scene in Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” where two members of the fictional band Stillwater are arguing over who works the hardest. The lead singer makes his case the best, yelling at the guitarist “You know what I do? I connect. I get people off. I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off!”

Convert that sentiment into music, and that is the sound of Foxy Shazam’s self-titled third album. This is music tailor-made to get you off. The magnificent howls of lead singer Eric Sean Nally grab you by the ghoulies from opening minute of the intro, which he closes with an ungodly howl that will make your dog freak the eff out, and doesn’t let go. From there it’s bombs away, literally, that’s the name of opening track, and figuratively; these crazy mothers from Cincinnati are not afraid to throw everything they got at you and then some.

Past that, it’s practically impossible to describe the maniacal sound Foxy Shazam created on this record. No genre can contain them, not even on a single song. They’re part ’70s glam, part ’80s metal and part ’90s hardcore, all with an overwhelming current of timeless soul thrown in. Some tracks, like “Count Me Out” and “Unstoppable,” wear their Queen/Elton John influences on their sleeves. But odder numbers like the oddly funky “Connect” defy all categorization. Then there’s the lyrics, which are so goofy and high on camp that they just have to be serious. On “Bye Bye Symphony” Nally seductively belts out “life is a bitch but she’s totally doable” and on the ode to down-low loving “Second Floor” he compares his sneaking ability to that of G.I. Joe. It’s so crazy it doesn’t just work, it works marvelously.

You need this record. Trust me. Sure, you can buy the new Broken Social Scene album and have yourself a good cry, or you can pick up Foxy Shazam and have your ears punched in the balls with a fistful of awesome. Your choice. (Sire 2010)

Foxy Shazam MySpace page

Alternative, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Funk, Metal, Progressive, Rock, Soul

Cincinnati Foxy Shazam Foxy Shazam CD review have your ears punched in the balls with a fistful of awesome Headlines