Albums

JD Simo JD Simo

Crows Feet Records

10/10

Fuzz-charged soul with a psychedelic heart

Imagine combining Motown with Woodstock and enhancing it with large dashes of blues and you get JD Simo, a Chicago-born, Nashville-based singer and guitarist. This is his second solo album and the 10 tracks are corkers: vibrant 70s soul groovers sit next to high-energy psychedelic rock workouts with melodic earworms aplenty. As for his guitar, he can riff, wail and wah-wah with considerable skill, taste and bravado – he channels Hendrix, Curtis Mayfield, Jimmy Nolan and numerous other iconic six-stringers with real verve.

Opener, , dips into early is a sum of James Brown meets Prince dashed with fuzzed out 70s rock. His blues changes over a James Brown groove are evident on – good-time funk, indeed. The huge-sounding groove and fuzz guitar on is both impressive and very infectious – recalling Lenny Kravitz in the early 90s but at the next level. As for lead single, , his Curtis Mayfield leanings are well to the fore here – beautiful clean chord guitar playing and sweet falsetto singing. Then you get to , a short instrumental that sees JD playing crazy up-tempo country guitar 16ths against a rock ’n’ roll train rhythm, quite jaw-dropping.