This double album came out on Record Store day to celebrate 20 years of the Alive Naturalsound label who have been putting out a lot of cool music over the years as this compilation ably proves. The only thing to bear in mind is that this is actually full of tracks by the label's artists that have either specially recorded for the album or are being released on vinyl for the first time.
The album opens with The Black Keys' Heavy Soul, one of the label's biggest acts. On this song they come on like a cross between RL Burnside and Howling Wolf: it's down dirty and gritty blues. From there, the album goes all early 70's pop on Buffalo Killers' Stand Back and Take a Good Look. Then Lee Bains and the Glory Fires come crashing in with a good raucous Total Destruction Of Your Mind, wherein they sound nice and frazzled.
Handsome Jack's take on Time Will Tell is real deep soul and sounds fantastic with guitars that could have been stolen from the Flying Burrito Brothers. It's really rather good. Scott Morgan's The Wind is a real 60's soul gospel slowie and sounds fantastic. That leads into the slightly faster T-Model Ford & Gravel Roads' Someone's Knocking On My Door, which features a nice swampy blues sound.
Brian Olive's Not Just Another Woman is a slice of tasty, deep southern soul and sounds like it should be a real floor filler. Which means it's time for some sexual release with Lonesome Shack, who sing through a valve microphone and have a nice echo-ey sound to their stripped back grunting blues.
Hollis Brown's version of Spoonful is gritty, downhome southern boogie blues. John The Conqueror's Gimme Gold is a good chugging blues boogie with some nice backing vocals to make it stand out.
The Dirty Streets version of Cold Sweat is dirty, funky garage rock that channels Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady. That goes straight into Mama's Cooking by Hacienda which feels like a cross between the Jim Jones Revue and Barrence Whitfield and the Savages and is very cool indeed.
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Guilty by The Sights is another tune that steals liberally from Jimi Hendrix but adds some good horns to the mix and comes across like a blue eyed soul song from the early 70's.
Radio Moscow's instrumental version of These Days is not the Jackson Browne classic but a Hendrix-style boogie rock work out and it's pretty cool. James Leg's Sinner Man is like a cross between early Suicide and Screaming Jay Hawkins: a quite incredible and captivating version of this old blues song. It makes me want to hear a lot more from James Leg.
Left Lane Cruiser's Hadn't I Been Good To You is dark garage blues with loads of reverb. It's dirty and full of soul.The Bloodhounds take things back to the garage for some gritty rocking on La Couahila: re-working the Bo Diddley beat to cool effect. Andre Williams I'm Stuck is some classic dirty down home blues rock with a nice slow rumbling feel to it.
Prima Donna's Rock & Roll Is Dead is glam rock like they want to be an updated Slade or Sweet. Paul Collins' Baby I'm In Love With You sounds like he wants to be the Bobby Fuller Four primarily though it eventually it bursts out into something a touch rockier. Outrageous Cherry's Garden Of Earthly delights is every bit as hippy dippy psychedelic as you'd hope would be.
All in all, this is pretty cool compilation that's well worth finding as long as its price tag hasn't gone through the roof as some Record Store Day releases tend to each year.
Find out more at Alive Naturalsound online
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