Here’s one to help take you into the weekend from a new, New Jersey-based duo that goes by the name of Dharmasoul. Featuring Jonah Tolchin on guitar and Kevin Clifford on drums (with the two trading off on lead and backup vocals), Dharmasoul makes an awfully strong name for itself with its debut album Lightning Kid (Dharmasoul Records).
Joined by a trio of friends on bass guitar, keyboards, and viola as well as two female backing vocalists, Tolchin and Clifford deliver an impressive program of ten original tracks, with sounds ranging from R&B soul and rock to hip-hop and funk.
In addition to the early-Black Keys-like grooves and stinging guitar of the upbeat, hypnotic “Chosen One” (for which you can view the video below), you’ll also want to be sure to check out the soulful R&B of “Open Your Heart” that fluctuates between a swaying, “I Found a Love” easiness and raw guitar and Fantastic Negrito-like vocals, and the hip-hop gospelish soul (think Tedeschi Trucks Band meets Fantastic Negrito, with a bit of Black Keys thrown in) of “Love Again”, including some terrific keyboards from Brendan Moore.
Recorded during a performance in Quebec last fall, the album is a raw, mostly rocking affair that nicely showcases Hill’s gruff, gritty vocals, often stinging guitar, and driving drums and other percussion that Hill plays with his feet and a drumstick attached to the head of his guitar, also adding harmonica on several numbers.
Here’s one we’ve been meaning to tell you about for a while now, a soulful, swinging recording that harkens back to the Memphis big band sound of B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland, with the band, in fact, taking their name from one of Bland’s biggest hits in “Turn on Your Love Light”. Made up of musicians who have toured and played with Bland, The Bo-Keys, Gregg Allman, Solomon Burke, Robert Cray and others, The Love Light Orchestra also features the talented John Nemeth on vocals; together, they make one hell of a first impression on their debut album The Love Light Orchestra featuring John Nemeth: Live from Bar DKDC in Memphis, TN! (Blue Barrel Records), twelve tracks of soulful, horn-driven blues that range from the swaying style of Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love” and a quiet, jazzy take on Buddy Ace’s “This Little Love of Mine” to the partly falsetto croons of Freddie King’s “What About Love” and the closing, shuffling R&B adaptation of Al Green’s “Love and Happiness”.
With Ledbetter having moved on to 
We’ve been fortunate to hear quite a bit from John Mayall in the past four to five years, between several new studio albums (
With its haunting vocals and tough, gritty guitar riffs, the edgy, lightly rocking opener “When I Go” establishes right up front that the pair hasn’t lost any of the fire they displayed on their debut release, a point reiterated through later uptempo tracks such as “The Bottle Wins Again” and “Movin’ On”, the latter also serving as a great example of Harper’s brilliant songwriting, with lyrics that include “You practice law without a license, psychology too/ but your PhD is in givin’ me the blues” and “you get away with murder, you got a way with words/ speakin’ in a language that nobody’s ever heard” as the song indeed gets you moving with its greasy harmonica and a tearing guitar solo.