The Soledad Brothers
' fifth album,
The Hardest Walk
, opens with
"Truth or Consequences,"
a solid and gloriously raunchy slice of
blues
-shot
rock & roll
that recalls
the Rolling Stones
in their
Sticky Fingers
/
Exile on Main St.
glory days with its gutsy guitar lines and horn accents. But
the Soledad Brothers
don't seem to be channeling the sound of
the Stones
so much as their approach on
. Like those abovementioned albums,
isn't afraid to make with the
rock
, and with the band expanded to a quartet for these sessions with the addition of multi-instrumentalist
Dechman
, songs like
"Crooked Crown"
and
"Good Feeling"
are rich and full bodied without sounding cluttered or losing the spaces around the notes. But just as
found as much hard groove and hard soul in their slow and quiet numbers as the rockers,
explore the sense of dynamics they discovered on 2003's
Voice of Treason
, and
"Crying Out Loud (Tears of Joy),"
"Let Me Down,"
"True to Zou Zou,"
and the title song are late-night numbers that add a potent atmosphere to the disc that straight-up guitar wail couldn't have brought them.
have obviously learned that their musical world does not begin and end with the messed-up
blues-rock
of their early days, and
sounds like their most satisfying offering to date. ~ Mark Deming