Rides On＜Colored Vinyl＞

Following a debut EP and two albums with Black Lips Oakley Munson in the producers chair, the Nude Party offer up their first self-produced effort, Rides On. Its the culmination of an over-two-year period that generated over 20 songs -- among them experiments with county and electro-pop -- all tracked at the septets leisure in their own barn studio in upstate New York. When it came time to sequence the record, they homed in on songs that favored 70s blues-rock a la Sticky Fingers-era Stones, albeit with conspicuous diversions into the 60s among the 13 tracks that made the cut on an album full of vintage flair. Rides On opens with the strutting "Word Gets Around," which effectively merges Rolling Stones- and T. Rex-derived grooves as singer Patton Magee talks out of turn ("You know Im not the kind to pry/Seldom say a negative word/Oh, but Jenny, havent you heard?"). The good times already underway, they keep them going on second track "Hard Times (All Around)," a similarly styled anthem with compact guitar hooks, slinky basslines, vintage organ, and tambourine working loosely together in effortless harmony, even through meter changes (and cheeky rhymes like "Far be/It from me"). They temporarily step away from the sphere of the Stones to do their best Tommy James & the Shondells on party anthem "Hey Monet," then dive deep into Phil Spector while making room for a couple other 60s pop tropes on "Cherry Red Boots" before the almost-title track ("Ride On") incorporates touches of the Velvet Underground -- and weve only reached the midway point. While the Nude Party come awfully close to quoting well-known riffs, grooves, and vocal affectations here, the fun they have doing so is contagious, and they nearly always bring enough of their own wry, irreverent, working-class moxie to the table that contemporary concerns as well as sheer charisma overpower any potential pastiche. Personnel notes: Not missing out on the sessions entirely, Munson did guest on the record; Sam Cohen mixed Rides On. ~ Marcy Donelson