Artist:     Rich Hope

Album:     I’m All Yours

Label:     Planned Obsolescence Recording & Novelty, Inc.

Release Date:     11.30.18

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From the rainy, woodsy Pacific Northwest with love, I’m All Yours arrives as a passionate dispatch from Vancouver’s Rich Hope gushing over the kind of swirling, psychedelic garage-rock, rough-and-tumble R&B and dark, bluesy menace the charismatic guitarist/vocalist seemingly inherited from the Animals and others of their ilk. His is a more modern approach, however.

The contents contained therein are occasionally combustible, as evidenced by a raucous “Runnin’ Shoes”—the track’s immediacy greatly enhanced by snappy handclaps—and an up-tempo, swaggering “5 Cents A Dance,” its dizzying organ haze just as delightfully disorienting as that which whirls about “It Come Alive” and jumps into an exuberant, blustery meltdown ignited by Hope’s hot guitar fury. Given his energy and versatility, it’s no wonder demand for Hope’s services as an opening act has been so high among like-minded freaks such as the Flamin’ Groovies, the Reverend Horton Heat and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Hope’s scintillating live shows around his hometown are said to be the stuff of local legend.

That Hope would cover the Flamin’ Groovies’ hustling “Golden Clouds” on I’m All Yours, Hope’s fourth album and first full-length since 2009’s Gonna Whip It on Ya, is no surprise then. With big, gregarious beats and a tight, cohesive performance from Hope, drummer Adrian Mack, bassist Erik Nielsen and keyboardist Matt Kelly, the foursome give it a tune-up and take it for a roots-rock spin. In the witching hour, Hope and company wind through “Paranoia Blues” like a crawling king snake and drink from the slow-burning liquor of “La Iguana,” where liquid horns fill spacey atmospherics with mystery and menace. And “Some Kind of Love” and “Creepstone” are slinky, nighttime R&B workouts that straighten up and strut about confidently. Not hung over in the slightest, though, “Blow Away” wakes to pleasant Southern country soul light streaming through the window. When Hope says I’m All Yours, he means it.

—Peter Lindblad