Oscar LaDell – Love & Revolution
(Independent)
Reviewed by Tim Gruar.
Guitarist Oscar LaDell has come of age, wearing his credentials on his sleeve as he navigates his own musical past and influences on this impressively diverse release that mines a multi-decade style sheet from Muddy Waters to Eric Clapton and Curtis Mayfield.
LaDell was born in the US but raised in Purakaunui, Dunedin. By his own admission he considers himself a second-generation bluesman, starting out playing standards by Muddy Waters, BB King and Guitar Slim in nightclubs and bars around town. He learned his trade busking and with his dad, Leo, who he tells me is also a great singer, harmonica and guitar player. You can certainly hear that heritage come out in his playing, which is right on point. LaDell’s style is powerful and expressive with a palette reminiscent of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and fresh. But over the years – he only in his early 20’s – funk, rock, soul has found their way into Oscar’s repertoire. In the space of one of LaDell’s originals the sound can go from from a gentle slow dance to explosive and hypnotic guitar maelstrom.
LaDell has made stuff with his dad before, and with his band Hoot, who help out on this album, especially the big band dance floor swinger, ‘Ask My Baby’. But he’s also quite prolific. This is his second real effort under his own name, having already done another album, ‘Gone Away’, last year.
“I started writing this album in New Zealand’s lockdown period, he told me, “My housemates and my girlfriend, Lilly Ofori (BV’s), were isolating together and the whole situation made me think about the things I really value. That’s what this album is about – the things in my life and in the world that I feel are important and worth fighting for.”
The album is a mix of love songs and political songs, all bundled up in wrappers of blues, classic rock, swing and soul, but also clear sentiments of his own tightly held belief system. For example, the deep 70’s funk groover ‘Change the World- Pt1 & 2’ were inspired by the ‘Black Lives Matter’ rallies that exploded across our screens back in June last year. The influence of writers like Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield is self-evident in the music and lyrics: ”People, on the street, Keep on fightin’ for that justice that you seek!” “I Cry, Cry, Cry, Cry for the mothers and the fathers, I Cry, Cry, Cry for the violence on the street! But that wont change the world. I’m gonna try to get up on my feet!”
And the funky, distorted Wah! Wah! guitars just make this song a really powerful, authentic protest anthem. Plus, the blistering solo that opens Pt.2 is a stunning performance that took me right back to those early Tower of Power records. Those numbers also feature a spirited and, dare I say, authentic performance on Djembe (a West African goblet shaped drum) by his friend Koffie Fugah, that comes in like a positive sound-wave at the end of the song and reminds us of the importance of ‘African/Black’ culture in modern music.
“I had always believed in being anti-racist and tried to live my life in a way that made positive change in that way, but seeing the ways that police brutality and white supremacy affected people, both those I knew and loved and people I’d never met, kind of galvanised me. I wrote those songs specifically thinking about some (white) people whom I heard disparaging looters, calling for unity and using the words of Dr. King to shame black protestors. That kind of nonsense made me really angry and I felt I wanted to tell these people to save their rebukes for the oppressors and to realise that we need real change on the part of the white supremacists. Since then, I’ve brought a Black Lives Matter donation box to every one of my gigs.”
While Mayfield is a big influence on this album, you can also hear plenty of Marvin Gaye and the Temptations, too. ‘Moonlight’ follows the ‘Sexual Healing’/’My Girl’ template, especially the sweet, high honey vocal-tones and smoother that silk harmonies that LaDell employs on this one.
Fans of the movie ‘Swingers’ and the Brian Seltzer Orchestra will instantly add ‘Ask My Baby’ to their dance card, while marvelling at LaDell’s incredible schwangin’ guitar licks, teddy boy rasp and brill cream swagger. There’s nothing original or remarkable about the composition but in terms of vibes and musical chops, well – let’s just say Jools Holland must be regretting not taking this call!
If you want Rock’n’Roll crooning, then ‘Please Forgive Me’ ticks that box. There’s more sweet honey and spine-tingling tonsil taming, to make this perfect for the Valentine’s Day playlist. It’s familiar and clever – like a more bluesy version of the Beatles’ ‘Oh. Darling!’ But the twangy steel guitars in the bridge elevate this to another level. LaDell credits this to “my dear friend Anders Jensen (all the way from Norway), who taught me a lot of my guitar tricks”.
With a switch in the playbook, he channels a young Clapton and his axe, and even his Creme-era vocal growl on the 60’s rocker ‘Everyday’. And given old Slowhand himself was inspired by his own blues heroes, it’s a perfect completion of the circle.
LaDell plays most of the guitars on this album – from acoustics to electric – but he has help from his circle of friends including his girlfriend Lilly Ofori who adds some backing vocals on three tracks, his Hoot bandmate Oliver Robson plays most of the bass parts, his dad Leo plays bass, who also helps out on bass and piano, and keyboardist Jaime Relton. He also had help from engineer/producer Matt Wilson, who plays all the drums and some even some bass parts when they recorded the album at Wilson’s Meadow Sounds in the tiny Mainland town of Lumsden.
Vocally, as I’ve already said, LaDell shows impressive range – from sugar sweet to rasp and growl, to battered, worn, black and blue. He has the chops. Here and there LaDell slides in and out of character as he moves between the voices of the classic bluesmen of the South and a Kiwi/Yank from the Mainland. You can hear this at times on the phrasing and occasionally clumbsy diction on ‘Well of Sorrow’ and ‘Salt and Sand’. However, these are just minor points. Those songs also contain some mighty fine acoustic blues guitar work. ‘Well of Sorrow’, in particular, is dripping in gutsy, twanging steel string slide riffs and growling vocals. Lines like “I feel so damn bad I’d wish I’d died in bed” are straight out of the writer’s manual, taking you down into the pits of despair. There were moments in this song I was reminded of John Butler’s early works.
On ‘Salt and Sand’, my personal favourite on this album, LaDell finds his real strength, mixing traditional blues, more solo guitars and themes of climate change and Biblical floods: “I was raised by the sea, brought up in salt and sand”, “I am ready for the waves to come crashing across this land…Tear down the walls and let the sea come a-rushin in”. The bridge and outro fret work on this number is particularly good. Maybe LaDell stole a box set of Smithsonian blues recordings and spent his summers studying up on the old masters. It certainly seems like that.
By contrast, the soulful sweet falsettos and cruisy mood on ‘In Your Arms’ and the reprise that book ends follows ‘Salt and Sand’ took me right back to early John Hiatt and Marvin Gaye tunes. You get a bit more of that on ‘Falling For You’, this time with some Isley Brothers vibes thrown in the mix. I really enjoyed the casual fade out of 70’s electric guitars over the drums on the end of this. LaDell admits he was strongly influences by acts like H.E.R. This song really does feel like a tribute to that singers’ own ‘Hold On’.
In my own fantasy, I’d have LaDell opening for L.A.B, the synergies between their particular blends of Blues, Soul and Reggae music would make the perfect night out in this humble reviewer’s opinion. Oscar LaDell is yet to make it with a big top forty hit. But you can see he’s not far off striking gold. He’s clearly a musically well-educated musician and this is obvious in his playing and on the production of this great new classic. As Wayne Campbell would say – Schwing!
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