There is history and beauty in taking rock and blues and a bit of country, turning it up loud, and making swamp rock. It is what Creedence Clearwater Revival did to great success. That’s what – with their own twist – The Delta Saints have done.
Nashville-based group released its debut full length, Death Letter Jubilee, on January 15th.
The opening cut is “Liar” is a taste of that swampy southern rock . Shout out to Little Feat, with a funky bass breakdown that helps hips sway.
“Chicago” grooves to the old Chess blues sound, grinding through a tale (“gotta dollar in my pocket and my feet on the ground”) of ain’t-got-much-but-gonna-make-it.
Consisting of Ben Ringel (vocals/dobro), Dylan Fitch (guitar), David Supica (bass), Ben Azzi (drums), and Stephen Hanner accompanying on harmonica while on tour, the band’s ongs rise and fall, throwing loud guitars and pulling back to highlight singer Ringel’s shouts.
The title cut coasts with bumping harp and a bass line that eventually opens up to a thumping and running “I’m gonna dance and I’m gonna sing” chorus, with a full-on group shout/clap bridge. Fun.
“Jezebel” tweaks the album’s mold with a throwback to a 1950’s Mississippi front porch blues conversation. “From the Dirt” mines Black Keys territory, raising that ante with some southern funk.
You like the Avett Brothers? check out “Out to Sea”.
The band enlists some gospel background singers to makes the quick “River” anode to the South’s musical heritage.
Having met at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and has gained some good fortune throughout in Europe, and will spend two months this spring playing shows overseas.
Their sound is a Memphis soul-rock stew mixed with distorted electric guitar and harmonica. For Indiana fans of the crashing, electric country blues (think of Rev. Peyton) this one is for you. Fans of jam bands can like them. Black Crowes fans too.
www.thedeltasaints.com
Rob Nichols
Indiana Album Review: Pete Calacci – "Other Side"
About halfway into his album Other Side, the debut effort from Indiana singer/songwriter and guitarist Pete Calacci, there’s a song called “Headed for the Stars.”
The cut is a big, fat, radio-friendly and familiar-sounding original piece of rock and roll – – effectively channeling a Tom Sholz-like guitar and the sound of late ’70s-era Boston. Who would have guessed this sonic homage to a nearly 40-year-old self-recorded iconic rock album would come out of Indiana?
Other Side‘s soundscape is both a product of how Calacci – – a carpenter who works at the BP Refinery in Whiting during the day – – recorded the album and played a lengthy musical stint in an Indianapolis cover band. This solo work was created in his apartment, and he played all the instruments – – other than a couple background vocals and a keyboard – – and mixed it himself.
Far from a lo-fi, sounds-like-he-used-a-boombox effort, the record is clean and loud and full of hooks and riffs that surface by surprise.
I hear Paul McCartney and Wings, some Beach Boys and Beatles harmonies. The pop of Matthew Sweet and Marshall Crenshaw. I hear The Band. I like what I hear. And this record sounds good loud.
Calacci spent his early twenties living on the Southside of Indy, playing in a band called Stage One at clubs like The Backstage, Bentley’s and The Vogue, so he came by his ’70s and ’80s influences honestly.
The Other Side is an album whose music hits harder than the lyrics, and Calacci uses his guitar to give the heart of the record a loud, electric, amped-up sound that never really goes away.
The opening “Cold Hearted Woman” rocks like The Cars and Matthew Sweet – – a power pop confection that enters into Tom Petty‘s neighborhood. But the record never strays far from its essence – – a full-on, “let’s-rock” guitar album.
Calacci’s voice sits just atop the guitar on most songs, aching and arching just enough to allow genuine and welcome cracks as he both reaches during the rockers and guides the ballads. An acoustic guitar and his own harmony (and double-tracked) vocals give the punchy electric guitar a pairing to nicely enable a marriage of power chords with ragged vocal sweetness.
“Secret” has an underlying gentleness swathed in a pair of pop/rock dueling guitars.
“Fear” echoes a soaring “Behind Blue Eyes” – era The Who.
Calacci’s acoustic duo bandmate Kelly Skaggs sings on “Carpe Diem” and “Want Me Too.”
This is an album that demands its loudness. Think about driving down the road in an old Buick Skylark with the cassette player turned up as loud as the damn Sparkomatic would go. That’s the sound of this album, guided by Calacci’s electric guitar playing, and his ability to create one of the fullest, play-it-loud rock albums of the new year – – by himself.
Hear “Headed for the Stars”
VIDEO: Sugarland covers Springsteen's "Atlantic City"
Rare chance to hear Kristian Bush (the guy in Sugarland) in concert with the band, doing an inspired take on Springsteen’s “Atlantic City”. Great audio, and the version, especially the final third of the song, channels some of the Bruce magic. The version is similar to how Springsteen and the E Street Band play it on their tour, with a bit of a quicker pace. Bush says this was the first Springsteen song he ever learned, and Nebraska was his first Bruce album.
Album Review: Shelby County Sinners – "6"
On their new EP, 6, Indianapolis’ The Shelby County Sinners have thrown down their best recorded effort yet; a taste of Hoosier rock filtered through key 60’s and 70’s folk-rock influences. It is rock and roll hillbilly country music, with lyrics that raise the stakes for the band. Is this their peak, or is there more (and better) to come?
Eric Grimmett’s guitar jump out, song after song. Singer Shelby Kelley finds the pocket for his nimble, twangy voice, and has written a batch of songs that sound good with the band’s minimalist approach. Mo Foster powers the songs with a forceful-yet-economic stand-up bass groove.
No song is very long, trading length for impact, paying homage to influences without losing creative spark.
“21st Century Bail Out Blues” opens the EP with Kelley spitting out Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisted-style lyrics. A righteous electric guitar appears early, with barbed wire lines and a solo proves to be a harbinger of the sound and strength it will bring to the album. The small but cracking band delivers – think Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Three in 2012.
The EP, smartly recorded (live, according to Kelley) at Pop Machine with Eric Klee Johnson, is punchy and full. It plays without too many tricks (other than some megaphone vocal effects) and nicely straddles a line between backwoods party and studio gem.
The two standout cuts on the album show up near the back of the set. “Down the Road” splashes Springsteen-esque harmonica while a pretty and gutsy Kelley vocal pushes the tune into anthemic territory. Once of the most accessible cuts on the record, it’s instantly likable and lovingly played throughout, all the way to a sweetly abrupt ending.
“Hey Old Man” feels like a old Byrds tune, recreated by a country rock band from Indiana, and radio ready for a WTTS spin. A great surprise appears when the band rips into the opening lines of Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light”, near the end, perfectly placed and terrifically poignant.
“East Side” continues a rockabilly slant, with a hint of Todd Snider.
“Wuntz” (as in “wuntz I loved you) is classic corn country (written by Foster) with a smiling, tongue-sorta-in-cheek gang-sing about lost love set to a southern-drawling vocal. A line about getting out of prison appears at one point, proving that the circle remains unbroken when it comes to sturdy country music cliches.
“Say Baby” bookends the record with another Dylan-style blues number. The band works a dirty guitar to great effect, with shouts of “blows your mind baby” neatly wrapping up a cohesive little album of Hoosier rock and twang.
Kelley emailed me and said they were working on a full-length release for 2013. If they build on what is contained in 6, the rockabilly bar band may find themselves with a bunch more of critics as fans, and music fans as friends.
Album Review: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals – "The Lion The Beast The Beat"
Nearly two minutes into the title cut of their new The Lion The Beast The Beat album, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals break into Who-like power chords and drop in a disco-like backbeat (“can’t stop the beat”). It becomes a huge sound, with a reaching-for-an-anthem quality – like Heart or Pat Benatar might do in their prime.
The new album is less of the blues, and more a full body leap into radio-friendly, pop music, with disco-like thumps and sweeping choruses. Yet it is still a record that rocks and can move listeners within the big sounds and lyrical turns, especially effective when Potter bares her emotions, mixing her strong female worldview with little girl hurt.
The Lion The Beast The Beat will either be a breakthrough album, or a overreaching stumble along the career path.
There’s no doubting Potter’s majestic voice – whether a whisper or a shout, hers is one of the great sounds in rock.
While her 2010 self-titled album featured Grace and the band in a black and white cover photo, the new record’s art is more art, less grit. And that’s the sound of the music, especially compared to the pretty-and- loose outing the last record.
“Never Go Back” dives into programmed beats and loops, with Potter’s voice rescuing the piece with her cooing, razor-edged vocals.
“Stars” is a beautiful, acoustic–based tune of redemption, with gorgeous piano and soaring vocals. It appears twice, the second time as a bonus track duet with Kenny Chesney.
“One Heart Missing” is a winner, taking a U2 arena rock trajectory to hurt and love.
“Parachute Heart” echoes Fleetwood Mac, sounding much like Nicks and Buckingham, circa Rumors.
Is this latest release a grasp at finding a more wide-ranging fanbase, or will it alienate her current fans? Hard to say, because her voice is still something marvelous in rock and roll. In the end, music is always redeemed in the live performance, and Potter and her band are a great live band.
“Turntable” bites like the Potter of old, with an urgent guitar strapped to a disco beat.
The album is a pot of new sounds with a whiplash personality, breaking a blues and rock stereotype that may have existed with the band’s listeners.
Producer Jim Scott, best known as a go-to engineer and mixer for bands wanting an earthy, homegrown but polished sound (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Wilco, the Tedeschi Trucks Band), helms the majority of the record. The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach produced and co-wrote the track “Loneliest Soul”, “Never Go Back” (the first single) and “Runaway”, bring that band’s sound to Potter.
Looking universal truths, the lyrics are sometimes buried by more musical weight the songs can shoulder. Much of the record feels like it is trying to make a “grand statement”; simplicity lost in the chase for a bigger sound.
Still, it is a record that blossoms through repeated listens, softening the new layered sound we get from the guitar-drums-and-keys rockers.
Potter closes the album with a duet with Willie Nelson on her song “Ragged Company”, originally from her 2005 Nothing But Water album. The majesty of the song and the brilliance of Willie lend gravity to the music and the pairing serves as reminder that as Grace Potter and The Nocturnals are growing, they can do it without forgetting a simpler past.
VIDEO: Rick Springfield with Dave Grohl and Sound City Players
Highlight of the music weekend: Dave Grohl’s new movie Sound City debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and he had a concert featuring Rick Springfield, John Fogerty, Stevie Nicks and more…but it sounds like Springfield stole the show… (VIDEO BELOW)
from Movieline review: Rick Springfield’s set resonated even more with Sundancers judging from how violently their dancing and jumping shook the club’s floor. It was an extended moment of pure rock bliss in which all the labels that get applied to music in terms of what’s cool (Foo Fighters) and what’s not (Rick Springfield) fell away and infectious, enduring pop music was celebrated for its essence. Grohl introduced the former General Hospital actor as “the one, the only, fucking Rick Springfield,” and the band played together on a number of the former pop star’s 1980s radio hits, “I’ve Done Everything For You,” “Love Is Alright Tonite” and “Jessie’s Girl.” And watching the beatific look on punk pioneer-turned-Foo-Fighter Pat Smear’s face as he played along to these Top 40 hits was indisputable proof that a good song is a good song.
As Grohl said archly between songs: “You’ve cracked the code, Rick Springfield. You’ve figured out how to write the perfect song. Goddamn you.”
Meanwhile, Springfield rose to the occasion of playing with one of the most balls-out rock bands in show business. In Sound City, he reveals somewhat sheepishly that Pat Benatar’s husband Neil Giraldo was pulled into the recording studio to lay down the famous guitar riff to “Jessie’s Girl” because the song’s producer didn’t think Springfield’s playing was up to snuff.” But that humiliation was very much in the past at Friday’s concert. Onstage at Park City Live, Springfield behaved like a bona fide guitar god as he traded licks with Grohl.
FROM ROLLING STONE: The supergroup grew out of Grohl’s Sound City documentary, which goes inside the fabled Van Nuys recording studio where Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Metallica and Nirvana recorded some of their most acclaimed albums.