Artist: Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul
Album: Summer of Sorcery
Label: Universal Records
Release Date: 5.03.2019
Where to start with an album like this from a truly astonishingly well-qualified artist and performer? Firstly, to say, this is good…..very tasty, with a sort of near-tongue-in-cheek, sideways glance at a range of styles and tremendous touches of rockn’roll fire that it seems almost a musical pastiche at times. No doubt, exactly what the guy intends from the very off!
Little Steven is, of course, a remarkable figure; far from little in terms of scale, ambition or background. This is no less than the always adventurous Stevie Van Zandt, guitarist with Springsteen’s E Street Band and writer and actor with one of the USA’s finest televisual exports, The Sopranos. He also fronts the Disciples of Soul, a band that not only crosses musical divides, merrily colliding with other genres at almost every twist and unexpected turn on the harmonic highway. With Summer of Sorcery, Van Zandt writes the material, sings, plays wailing guitar and kicks up an absolute musical maelstrom. Switching effortlessly from full-throttle rock, he visits some funky beats, sparkling rhumba and Latin rhythms before adding some slippery ballads and searching soul to the magical musical mélange.
It’s genuinely doubtful that many other—if any other—musicians working today could have the ambition or confidence to deliver an album of this power and surprise. But Van Zandt simply knows no bounds nor succumbs to uncertainty or hesitancy—concepts that beleaguer many but are routinely shouldered aside by this genuine genius. With this, Van Zandt’s first release in around 20 years, we should count ourselves lucky that he’s prepared to share some of his magic with us from time to time.
—Iain Patience
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