Rocky Road

Eli Reed: a new soulman

68.160.29.111

Last night I saw Eli "Paperboy" Reed and the True Loves in 300 or so seat hall in Newburyport, MA (outside Boston). The boy can kick it and the band is tight. This is high-energy, infectious soul music that will make you want to dance.

Eli is the latest retro soul white kid (Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse), but IMO, the truest to the roots (in fairness, the band is not all white, if that matters to you). He actually spent a year in Clarksdale, Miss. playing around, and he has soaked up the entire Stax catalog, and then some. He's got a very nice James Brown falsetto shout, but also many echoes of Otis Redding, Bobby Bland, Al Greene, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, etc. Great taste in influences. But it's not a slide show of R&B greats -- he's absorbed it all and made it his own.

Unlike Joss Stone, he doesn't remind you of the sonic equivalent of someone who went to a vintage '60s clothing store and wears a bunch of stuff that no one back in the day ever put together. If you heard his CD, you might think it was a a long lost Stax master from a great obscure artist.

He writes his own material (the lead guitar player and bass player also get some writing credits) and they are frankly exactly the kind of AM radio love lost or found songs that Stax lived off of. No "What's Goin' On" here. But they are fun and funky.

The True Loves are three horns (tenor, baritorne and trumpet, sometimes two tenors), drums, bass and a lead guitar. All great, all tight. I could quibble that the lead player is a little busy and a little loud sometimes. Eli is a second guitar, sometimes used as rhythm accents, sometimes a counter line, sometimes just doubling the hook. He clearly can play, he just doesn't indulge. Nor does anyone else much -- it's ensemble music. It is pretty complex -- most songs have a modulation up (the old Brill Bldg/Motown upshift), bridges, some have dramatic stops and starts, etc.

Eli has room to grow. After an hour or so, you realize that he has two basic feels -- uptempo and slow. The modulations are well done, but not always needed. In time, I hope he introduces some more variety into the way he crafts songs. But he is a huge, better than raw, 24-year old talent who will make you want to SHOUT.

His myspace page has full length samples from his CD. If he comes to your area, and you like that kind of R&B and soul, treat yourself.

Eli's myspace page (Open in New Window)

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