DeWolff - Love, Death & In Between (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Soul/Funk/Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 3 Feb 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

Only yesterday, I reviewed the new Mono Inc. album, which was a new entry to the German album charts at number one. Today, I'm reviewing the new one from DeWolff, which I see was a new entry to the Dutch album charts at, guess what, number one. Their previous album, Wolffpack, which got an 8/10 from me back in 2021, only reached the second spot, held from the top by the Foo Fighters. There's something very positive going on over there in Europe. Checking other countries tells me that the top two albums in Finland in mid-January were VV and Turmion Kätilöt, both of which I've reviewed, even if I can't find newer data. Suddenly I'm a chart watcher.

I'm going with an 8/10 for this album too, even though it's a sprawling sixty-eight minute dive even further into genres in which I have little background. Wolffpack mixed its psychedelic rock and its southern rock with heavy doses of the sounds of the seventies: especially funk and soul, but even a little disco. This does the same but the ratios are different, keeping a rock base mostly intact but venturing far deeper into soul, funk, gospel and blues. Last time the balance was often between a laid back Lynyrd Skynyrd and Stevie Wonder, but here it's more like John Kongos and Nina Simone. There's a lot of Sinnerman here but with many nods to far less epic music too.

It starts of as it means to go on, as if we're tuning into a seventies soul show. Are you ready for the Night Train? It feels like an MC has given the cameraman approval to pan over to the stage, where DeWolff are about to erupt into motion. And they do exactly that, because this was apparently an entirely live recording, not in the sense of performing on stage but in the sense of recording right into the machines as a band without any overdubs added in post-production. This is precisely what they played in the studio and it feels vibrant for having that approach.

There are only three members of DeWolff, Robin Piso and the van de Poel brothers, but there are a host of others contributing to this one. I count eight of them, whether they're providing bass to the sound, adding vocals or guitar or keyboards, or jumping in with flute, trumpet or trombone as needed, with a special mention here due to Nick Feenstra for a fantastic saxophone solo to finish up Message for My Baby. Sometimes they sound like a trio, plenty of space between the band and the floating Hammond organ cloud behind them. Sometimes they become a full on party.

Because the album is so long, there are a dozen songs on offer, even with Rosita clocking in at the surprising length of sixteen and a half minutes. Only Wontcha Wontcha otherwise reaches the six minute mark, so this isn't bloated, especially given that that one is one of the party songs, finding its way into a full on carnival celebration in song form around the halfway mark. Rosita simply has more to tell and it does that in a set of movements that continually grab us into its mindsets. It's grabbing for us at the five minute mark when it goes quiet and introspective. It's grabbing for us halfway through when it turns into a revival meeting.

Pablo van de Poel, the guitarist in DeWolff and one of its vocalists, has talked about how deep the dives were that they were taking into old soul, gospel and classic R&B, checking out bands like the Impressions, the Clovers and the Soul Stirrers, along with bigger names we might remember such as Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and the Staple Singers. He's also mentioned attending a sermon by Al Green at his own church in Memphis, which he describes as "a life-changing experience, musically." This is Pablo and DeWolff treating music as religion, hurling emotions at the tape recorder to be recorded as waveforms.

There's a lot here, far more than I can do justice to within a sub-thousand word review. I must say that certain songs leapt out at me, but also that none of those that didn't are filler. The weakest song here is strong, merely overshadowed by its company. I gravitated towards the blues songs, a delightful guitar from Pablo van der Poel on Will o' the Wisp and even more delightful Hammond organ from Robin Piso. Mr. Garbage Man is a nice slow blues tune and Gilded (Ruin of Love) is laid back glory in four minutes. I liked the party songs too, when the band went full on church gospel or Caribbean carnival or just John Kongos groove.

There's so much here to enjoy, even if I can't tell you the derivation of much of it, and it's full of an obviously live energy. Congratulations to DeWolff on that number one on the Dutch album charts and I hope you stay there for quite a while yet.

Paul Stanley's Soul Station - Now and Then (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Soul/R&B
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Mar 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

I always aim for my two reviews in a day to be a rock album and a metal album, to help underline just how diverse the genres are. I can't think of anything more unlike Chilean atmospheric doom that fits in my scope to follow Rise to the Sky. Well, it kinda sorta fits my scope. It's really not a rock album but it's the current project of one Paul Stanley, who's been a rock icon for half a century. And, while this is something of a departure from the current Kiss sound, it's really not that far from some of the places they've been musically. There's a reason why sources list their Dynasty album as both rock and disco.

There's also a reason why Discogs credits Stanley initially as an arranger, an orchestrator and a writer, only adding producer and lead vocalist way down the list, behind Ray Yslas on percussion and Ely Rise on keyboards. And no, I'm not putting down his singing, I'm highlighting that he did things here that he probably hasn't ever done on a Kiss album. Looking down the list of musical contributors, which include a string quartet, a trumpet and three saxophones, but only one guitarist, Rafael Moreira, there's just one name I recognise from the rock world and that's Eric Singer, who's been the drummer with Kiss for most of this millennium. I should point out that, had I listened to this entirely blind, I wouldn't have recognised either Singer or Stanley.

And, with all of that build-up, here I should point out that Stanley put this band together to give him a way to pay musical homage to some of the influences of his youth, initially in a live setting and only at this point in the studio. And I don't mean Kiss influences, such as the Yardbirds, the Beatles and Alice Cooper. I mean Paul Stanley influences, which means Motown. The covers here, and I believe there are nine here out of fourteen songs, are of Motown bands. When I played this to the better half, she knew the opening song immediately and sang along with it, even if she couldn't remember who originally recorded it. Now, being English, I only knew one of these songs, which I'd see as deep soul cuts, even if they might not be.

For instance, that opener is Could It Be I'm Falling in Love, originally by the Spinners, who I would see as the Detroit Spinners because we already had a folk group called the Spinners (who I've seen live). I didn't just not know it, I couldn't have told you that it was a cover but I Do and I, Oh I are originals. I'm very thankful to Discogs and Google to help me identify which are which. Oh, and I fully realise, by the way, that that's just as much a compliment to a band writing new music in an old style as a deliberate acknowledgement that I'm totally out of my depth in this genre.

Ooo Baby Baby, as quintessential a Motown song title as was ever written, was originally recorded by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. O-o-h Child, which isn't too far behind, was by the Five Stairsteps, who I haven't even heard of. I don't think I've heard of the Delfonics either, but La La Means I Love You was one of theirs. I've heard of the Stylistics, even if I've never heard them, and You Are Everything is theirs. I have, at least, heard the Temptations and the Four Tops, whose repertoires contributed Just My Imagination and Baby I Need Your Loving.

I'll add another compliment. Stanley seems more at home in this style than he does in the rock music he's been making for almost half a century. He sings a little higher and with easily a hundred times as much subtlety. Part of his charm as the singer in Kiss is that he's raw and primal, precisely neither of which attributes manifests here. That one song I knew is Al Green's Let's Stay Together and, while I'd never have guessed it coming in, Stanley does a damn good job with it. He may not be quite as smooth as Green, but he's not that far away, and he's able to add some neat earthiness that wasn't previously there. This may sound like heresy but, as iconic as he is in Kiss, he's a better singer in Soul Station.

This really is accomplished stuff, even if it sounds like a joke. Stanley has explained in interviews that a lot of this style made it into Kiss songs that I know. Shout It Out Loud, for instance, he built like a Four Tops song with the same sort of call and response structure. He calls the Unmasked song What Makes the World Go Round "basically a Spinners song, but done in a different way."

Perhaps the easiest way to highlight how good this is would be to suggest that I might actually come back to this again, which I really didn't expect going in. No, this isn't my genre of choice, though I do like old school rhythm and blues a lot more than new school R&B, but I downright enjoyed songs like La La Means I Love You, The Tracks of My Tears and Lorelei, the latter of which is an original. Give it a shot. He means it and it's infectious.