{"id":22406,"date":"2022-01-30T05:30:28","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T10:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22406"},"modified":"2022-01-31T14:54:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T19:54:59","slug":"album-review-rich-nelson-band-fret-and-wail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/30\/album-review-rich-nelson-band-fret-and-wail\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Rich Nelson Band — Fret and Wail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One\u2019s place of birth can exert a significant influence upon an individual. Even, it seems, if one didn\u2019t live there for very long. To wit: People often peg me as a New Yorker, though I neither have the accent (\u2018least I don\u2019t think I do) nor have I lived there since before my fourth birthday.<\/p>\n

Today Rich Nelson lives in Western North Carolina, though he\u2019s a native of Detroit, and he lived there for many years. And the Motor City spirit comes through on his original music. Nelson\u2019s their long player, Fret and Wail, continues on with the high quality musicianship and songwriting that characterized his previous releases<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The pandemic put the brakes on live performance in 2020, but Nelson continued work on his third album, releasing it late last year. His aesthetic is equal parts breezy melodies, strong vocals and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll muscle. The songs open with strong hooks and then develop\/unfold as the go along. Nelson often adopts a first-person point of view for his lyrics, and his songs explore a wide array of emotions and ideas.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a timeless character to these songs; working in a mainstream melodic rock context, there\u2019s little about the songs on Fret and Wail that identify them as 21st<\/sup> century songs. Nelson\u2019s arranging approach steers clear of trendy flourishes; the result is an album that isn\u2019t likely to feel \u201cdated\u201d five years from now.<\/p>\n

Subtle touches of other styles (even reggae) work their way into songs like \u201cWalking in Circles,\u201d but the music is firmly planted in the tuneful rock category. And the character of the tunes is nicely varied: \u201cOne More Picture Show\u201d is a melancholy mid-tempo tune with soaring vocal harmonies, while \u201cAfter All\u201d is a heartland rocker. Tasty blues licks inform \u201cAfter All.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson cranks up the distortion for \u201cDetroit City Way,\u201d an arena rocker worthy of its name. \u201cImagination keep the energy going with an even better melody and more stacked vocals. A hypnotic signature guitar melody is at the center of \u201cWhen,\u201d an epic tune that may remind some listeners of prime-era Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The evocative, cinematic track is the strongest among Fret and Wail<\/i>\u2019s dozen tracks. A slow burn, the track finds Nelson waiting four-plus minutes to start singing; the track runs more than eight minutes, and none of that time is wasted.<\/p>\n

Piano takes center stage \u2013 joined by some fretless bass \u2013 on \u201cI\u2019m Never Going to Let You Down Again.\u201d The song is different from most everything else on the album, but its strong pop values \u2013 hints of Imagine<\/i>-era John Lennon \u2013 make it a winner. The powerful yet understated \u201cIt\u2019s Been So Long\u201d has a weary yet optimistic feel. \u201cOne Step at a Time\u201d demonstrates that there\u2019s still life left in the power ballad idiom. And the album closes on a contemplative note with the moody \u201cHands of Time.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a showcase of Rich Nelson\u2019s Detroit-bred songwriting talents, Fret and Wail<\/em> would seem to present the best of what\u2019s he\u2019s been up to lately. But word is that mere months after the release of his third album, a fourth is already in progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One\u2019s place of birth can exert a significant influence upon an individual. Even, it seems, if one didn\u2019t live there for very long. To wit: People often peg me as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[4092],"class_list":["post-22406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-rich-nelson","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22408,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22406\/revisions\/22408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}