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CD reviews: Nakia and Black Joe Lewis
Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Nakia
Water to Wine
(Self)
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!
(Lost Highway)
As any good bartender will attest, the secret to a good cocktail is the perfect mix of sweet and strong, smooth and harsh. Good soul music is no different — the most memorable soul artists blend the sweetly positive humanity of gospel with the harsh kick of furious rhythm and blues.
To judge by that rubric, Austin’s woefully underappreciated soul scene is in good shape. The last month has seen debut full-lengths by two of the city’s most highly regarded up-and-comers: Nakia, the Alabama-raised crooner with the full-throated voice, and Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, the garage soul octet that delivers gritty garage soul with machine gun urgency. And though Black Joe Lewis offers up the more compelling debut, both albums herald the emergence of two major talents.
Thousands of Austinites might best recognize Nakia as the unassuming fellow pulled on-stage for a dance with soul diva Sharon Jones at the Austin City Limits Music Festival 2008. She’s not the first genre devotee to see something special in Nakia. His clean, authentic stylings also attracted the attention of veteran local singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso, who co-wrote “Water to Wine.” Seasoned pro and shining newcomer complement each other nicely — Fracasso’s keys and roots rock sensibility are a perfect fit for Nakia’s sugary Southern soul.
Punchy opener “Choose Your Poison” establishes the album’s modus operandi: catchy but not overpowering guitar riffs, Nakia’s rich voice and lyrics that lay bare the record’s themes of discrimination, love, loss and spirituality. “On the Bus” features an Otis Redding whistle, while “There Goes the Neighborhood” is a dizzyingly brilliant array of instrumentation and insightful lyricism. The slightly bitter “Elizabeth Lee” and “Outta My Head,” meanwhile, are frustrated odes to a lost love in the best tradition of Southern blues.
But the album’s glossy, clean production occasionally overpowers its passion, as on the antiseptic, Biblical title track. Nakia’s assembled a talented band and might be Austin’s most soulful singer this side of Malford Milligan, but a handful of the tracks are oddly limp on the recording.
Black Joe Lewis’ “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is” provides an interesting contrast, visceral and gritty as it is. If Nakia’s album is a glass of wine, Black Joe Lewis’ debut is a shot of cheap whiskey — harsh, short-lived, edgy and entirely intoxicating.
The album kicks off with the aptly titled “Gunpowder,” an explosive homage to the best of ’70s Stax. Lewis follows with the call-and-response blues rocker “Sugarfoot.” The lyrics deal with familiar themes for soul: love, poverty and debauchery. Lewis’ cleverest song, “Get Yo (Expletive),” is an unbelievable-sounding tale that begins with him forgetting his girlfriend’s name and closes with him evading the Austin Police Department. It’s probably true.
But it’s the cutting vocals, delivered with razor-sharp intensity and augmented by the Honeybears’ tight, riotous horns and guitar that make “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!” truly special. Despite its release on Lost Highway — reliable purveyors of American roots — and production from Spoon’s Jim Eno, it’s an infinitely rougher-sounding album than Nakia’s “Water to Wine.” Listen to it on vinyl, with pops and hisses intact, and the album could easily be mistaken for a time-lost refugee from soul’s ’70s heyday, a contemporary of James Brown or Baby Huey. It’s not a deep or terribly adventurous album, but it is reliably fun.
Nakia plays a CD release show at 8 p.m. Saturday at Jovita’s, 1619 S. First St. $8. 447-7825; nakia.net.
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