The Love You Bleed

Before becoming a solo artist, singer, bassist, and songwriter, Danielle Nicole played and sang in blues-rock band Trampled Underfoot with her brothers. The following year she stepped out on her own with an eponymous EP and her charting debut album, Wolf Den, that peaked at two. Shes never looked back. She released Live at the Gospel Lounge in 2017 while working the road incessantly. She followed with the chart-topping, Grammy-nominated studio set Cry No More in March 2018. Co-produced by the artist and Tony Braunagel, its lineup includes Walter Trout, Monster Mike Welch, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Luther Dickinson, Johnnie Lee Schnell, Mike Finigan, and others. Her subsequent headline tour took her across North America until 2020. The Love You Bleed, her third studio outing, is a welcome return. This set differs from all its predecessors. Its songs reflect a single, multi-faceted concept of love -- its joys, stresses, losses, and redemptive power. 11 of its 12 tunes were composed or co-composed by Nicole with longtime guitarist Brandon Miller. The lone cover is a poignant read of Steve Goodmans "A Lover Is Forever." This date was co-produced with Braunagel, and performed by her road band -- with Millers guitars, Damon Parkers keyboards, drummer Go-Go Ray, and string player Stevie Blacke. Opener and first single "Love on My Brain" is driven by B-3, bass, and guitars. Nicoles resonant vocal emerges from deep in the tunes grain to testify to her protagonists joyous, almost overwhelming emotion for the beloved. Millers guitar break underscores Nicoles lyric and buoyant vocal. "Make Love," the second single and album track, revels in the rock side of R&B with a soaring vocal that pours forth emotion and longing. This tune would not have been out of place on an early-70s Bonnie Raitt album. "Right by Your Side" is straight-up blue-eyed soul with Millers bluesy guitar adding ballast and depth to her rich, expressive vocal. (Why Nicole doesnt win Blues Music Awards vocalist of the year awards is a head scratcher; simply put, there are few in her league.) "How Did We Get to Goodbye" reveals the confusion both lovers share at the end of a relationship. Its minor-key blues shuffle underscores the poignancy in the vocal. The Goodman cover is an acoustic ballad rendered with sensitivity and uncanny poetic insight in Nicoles lyrics and vocals that go right to the hearts ache. "Say You’ll Stay" offers a lyric and vintage soul melody that could have been written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. Strings and slide guitar lilt through the melodic flow as Nicole strips away all artifice in her naked delivery. The stunning guilt-ridden "Who He Thinks You Are" is a languid, wrenching, R&B ballad that carries the albums title in its lyrics: "How the hell is he supposed to feel/The Love that you bleed/Is the life he leads...." As fine as her earlier recordings are, The Love You Bleed towers above them lyrically, musically, and emotionally, and is one of 2024s best blues albums. ~ Thom Jurek