Soulive: Rubber Soulive

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Don’t even bother arguing with me, boys and girls. Just finish reading this and then go out and procure (support your local record shop!) your own copies of THE TOP THREE BEATLES’ COVER ALBUMS OF ALL TIME.

Here we go, in order of release:

McLemore Avenue (1970) – Good ol’ Booker T. & The M.G.’s get the job done with taste, respect, and vintage coolness. Most of the music here is jammed out over three medleys with a stand-alone version of “Something” thrown in to boot.

Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band (2009 – yep, 39 years later) – It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. The Easy Star All-Stars tackle Sgt. Pepper from beginning to end, lovingly applying reggae riddims to the Holy Grail. It’s a fun and wonderful cover album; if you’ve just crawled out from under a rock and never listened to the Beatles, you could still appreciate this for what it is: a great reggae album.

AND NOW … Rubber Soulive (2010 – and by the way, don’t start. Just because your buddy told you months ago that you could rip a copy of this off the internet, go out and do the right thing: pay up; feed the band) – Groove kings Soulive had been thinking about doing an album of instrumental Beatles covers for a while; when the muse ambushed them last year, they were unloading their equipment at drummer Alan Evans’ studio with a week of downtime between gigs. Sometimes the best things just happen – the trio burrowed up with a bunch of Beatles albums, did some serious listening, and then proceeded to simply jam their hearts out. The result is 11 tracks that range from pretty-close-to-the-vest melodic arrangements (“In My Life”, for example) to treatments that quickly establish the original theme and then proceed to go out there (like “Eleanor Rigby”, which threatens to sling itself into the ozone at any moment, but never loses the groove).

Not only is Alan Evans’ powerhouse drumming all over this thing, but he commandeered the big board, as well – proving himself to be as talented a recording engineer and mixmaster as he is a percussionist. His organist brother Neal has his own multi-talent thing going on, holding down the bassline on the lower end of the keyboard while doling out crazy-ass leads and accents at the same time. Put your ear to, say, “Come Together” and think about what’s happening: during the wild break at the end, Neal Evans’ left hand is pounding out that big-as-the-world slamming bass thump, while the other side of his brain is sending the fingers of his soloing right hand in all kinds of tendon-ripping directions … sheer madness.

And, of course, along with the Brothers Evans we have guitarist Eric Krasno, whose work on Rubber Soulive reflects the grin he must’ve been wearing for the session. His faithful Ibanez “sings” the melody on “Help!”, cranks George Harrison’s original biting tone up another notch on “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, and goes waaayyy deep into the World of Wah on “Come Together”. The exchange of leads between Krasno and Neal Evans is always seamless, reflecting the kind of interaction that makes Soulive such a great live band. (In fact, Rubber Soulive is pretty much a live-in-the-studio effort, done with a minimum of retakes or overdubs. Alan Evans’ mantra for the session: “It’s cool – don’t change it.”)

Rubber Soulive is an album full of tunes done for the exactly right reason: total love for the subject at hand. Add in the groove factor and you have one great piece of work.

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