In the Blossom of Their Shade

If youve been following Illinois-bred troubadour Pokey LaFarge since at least the mid-2010s youll be familiar with his jazzy throwback brand of folk and country. Its a sound thats earned him a cult fan base, and one which hes found surprising ways to update, dipping into socially aware 60s-style soul on 2017s Manic Revelations and 2020s Rock Bottom Rhapsody. With 2021s In the Blossom of Their Shade, LaFarge takes his musical timelord skills to new heights, concocting a vintage-inspired rock & roll sound deep with decade-bending influences, that somehow remains stylistically coherent. Its also one of his most buoyant albums, playing like a balmy pool-side party. These are hooky songs, full of snappy rhythms and woody analog textures, including tasty tube amp guitar riffs, barroom piano, and woozy organ flourishes. Some of these giddy, back-to-basics aesthetics are at least in part due to Chris Seefried, who co-produced and arranged the album with LaFarge. Also adding an old-school sensibility is engineer/drummer Alex Hall, who previously worked and played on Rock Bottom Rhapsody and at whose Chicago-based Reliable Recorders/Hi-Style Studios LaFarge recorded the album. While many of the tracks on In the Blossom of Their Shade could have been recorded any time between 1950 and 1968, theres a timelessness and genre-bending quality to LaFarges work that brings to mind artists like Paul Simon and the Kinks Ray Davies. Theres also a strong undercurrent of slippery, 50s-style R&B, and cuts like the swampy Fine by Me and the gospel-inflected Killing Time conjure a tantalizing hybrid of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Johnny Guitar Watson. Whether sidling into the tropical country-reggae of Get It Fore Its Gone, or rising with throaty passion into the Spanish chorus of the Roy Orbison-esque Mi Ideal, LaFarge imbues each track with warm ebullience marked by his reedy, pitch-perfect harmonies. While LaFarge might still be a time-traveling rock troubadour, he seems to have found the center of his musical universe with In the Blossom of Their Shade. ~ Matt Collar

〈完璧な夏の午後のサウンドトラック〉というバッチリすぎるテーマを掲げた、愉快なアメリカーナ伝承者の7作目。ズブズブなスワンピー・サウンドを轟かせる"Fine To Me"やエレキ歌謡的な泣きの旋律が疾駆する"Rotterdam"といったイカす系から香ばしい南国情緒に包まれた"Yo-Yo"などのホッコリ系まで理想的なサマー・ムードを完璧に演出。この男前っぷりはジョナサン・リッチマンの域に達したと言っていいかもしれん。
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