Artist: Lucero
Album: All A Man Should Do
Bitrate: 257kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: ATO
Genre: Rock
Size: 82.43 megs
PlayTime: 0h 42min 36sec total
Rip Date: 2015-09-18
Store Date: 2015-09-18
Track List:
--------
01. Baby Don't You Want Me 5:02
02. Went Looking For Warren Zevon's 4:29
Los Angeles
03. The Man I Was 4:28
04. Can't You Hear Them Howl 3:54
05. I Woke Up In New Orleans 5:10
06. Throwback No. 2 4:15
07. They Called Her Killer 3:31
08. Young Outlaws 4:04
09. I'm In Love With A Girl (Big 2:25
Star)
10. My Girl And Me In '93 5:18
Release Notes:
--------
Nashville is such a musical mecca that it's easy to forget the city lying about
200 miles west not only has better BBQ, but is home to one of the richest
musical legacies of the 20th century. From W.C. Handy to Big Star to Three 6
Mafia, Memphis has birthed some of the most important artists in the history of
pop music. If there's a single band doing its best to carry the torch and embody
(almost) all of those strains of Memphis music today, it's Lucero. Over the
better part of two decades, they've excelled at everything from
tear-in-your-beer twang to straight-up Memphis soul, a range made cohesive by
frontman Ben Nichols's whiskey-soaked rasp and hard-drinking-ramblin'-man
vulnerability. And on their eighth album, All a Man Should Do, they encapsulate
a broader purview of Memphis's influence, and their own stylistic capabilities
as a band, than ever before.
The album includes a cover of Memphis power-pop band Big Star's classic ôI'm In
Love with a Girlö (the album's title comes from a lyric in the song), and Lucero
recruited the band's drummer, Jody Stephens, to sing backing vocals to boot.
Lucero's full-band arrangement nicely fills in the gaps of the acoustic
original, even if Nichols's vocals, pitched an octave lower than Alex Chilton's
high wail, don't quite measure up. There's a poppier underpinning to many of
these songs, expressed through electric keyboards and unexpectedly hummable
vocal melodies, to songs like ôThey Called Her Killerö and especially lead
single ôWent Looking for Warren Zevon's Los Angeles,ö on which Nichols's
double-tracked vocal hook, rueful-sounding though it may be, proves to be
possibly his catchiest earworm to date.
But these forays into greater melodicism don't come at the expense of Lucero's
identity as heavily tattooed brawlers and balladeers. All a Man Should Do
retains the big-band Memphis-soul instrumentation that defined their last two
albums, namely a horn section and Rick Steff's honky tonk piano, while at times
returning to a style of songwriting guitarist Brian Venable calls ôcowboy emo.ö
For a band that, for the last few years, has seemingly taken great pains to
transcend their alt-country roots, it's a bit surprising to find that the new
album begins with a song (ôBaby Don't You Want Meö) that would have fit
comfortably on 2002's Tennessee. The band successfully melds its past and
present, maintaining an emotional pathos without sacrificing the musicality
that's come to define much of their recent work. The renewed preponderance of
slow, sad songs may mean that much of the album lacks the high-watt adrenaline
of their last couple of efforts, but the downbeat style suits Nichols's lyrics,
which are particularly vulnerable this time around. Years of singing about women
who broke his heart and drinking the pain away seem to be taking their toll.
ôIt's too late to change the path I chose,ö Nichols croons mournfully on the
quavering ôI Woke Up in New Orleans.ö
On the album's second half, however, Nichols quits wallowing in regret and
elects to do something about it. Midway through the album's most soul-influenced
song, ôThrowback No. 2,ö the track becomes more upbeat and Nichols begins
entreating a girl to marry him. Complete with pounding Wurlitzer and a
fantastic, emotive sax solo by longtime Memphis session man Jim Spake, this
section of the song is one of the album's most musically exhilarating passages.
And considering the way Nichols usually sings about girls, his pleas are almost
as shocking as it would be to hear James Taylor unleash a violent torrent of
gangsta rap. Even on an album full of obvious nods to music of the past, Lucero
manages to surprise.