GospelbeacH is kind of a throwback band, but mainly because rock that’s done with timeless earnest lyrics, pleasing melodies, soulful harmonies and minimal overdubs just ain’t as prevalent today. Let It Burn is their third long-player, the anticipated true follow-up to Another Summer of Love (in between was the EP of quality leftovers Another Winter Alive).
There’s a bittersweet narrative woven into this new record: original member and guitarist Neal Casal (Ryan Adams, Circles Around The Sun, Chris Robinson Brotherhood) makes a welcome return to add some wonderful guitar, but this reunion proved to be short-lived as Casal tragically took his own life last August, just weeks before the slated release of this album.
That said, GospelbeacH has always been frontman Brent Rademaker’s baby, and that baby was born and bred in sunny, southern California, somewhere in the Laurel Canyon vicinity circa 1978. Rademaker not only sports a look that closely resembles Tom Petty, he sometimes sounds the part as well. “Dark Angel” would have made itself at home on Damn The Torpedoes down to Jonny Niemann’s soul organ and the Mike Campbell styled guitar licks, and “Let It Burn” has a riff that resembles “Refugee.” On that title song, Casal leaves behind an ardent lead guitar that will have to serve as one of his final artistic statements.
GospelbeacH isn’t copying Petty step-for-step. “Bad Habits” is closer to Nashville than it is Gainesville, and the twang (and Ben Reddell’s fuzz bass) is present on “Hoarder” as well. But if you’re going to emulate great songwriters, you’ve got to write some pretty good songs yourself; Rademaker and drummer Trevor Beld Jimenez craft memorable melodies and memorable lines like “I Feel like Winston Churchill in the summer of ’45.”
Though Rademaker takes a confessional songwriter stance in his songs and while he’s been through some personal shit lately, he manages to make the songs at least sound uplifting; “I’m So High” is buoyant, down to the choral chorus. And even as “Baby (It’s All Your Fault)” and “Get It Back” are piano-based breakup ballads, they swell up in the chorus with rich vocal harmonies, like all good Southern Cal songs do.
“Fighter” blends jangly guitars with piano and a touch of strings, which make this as mellow as Willie after having smoked a bowl. “Unswung” reaches back further than that Watergate-era timeline to the salad days of the Grateful Dead, making it a emigrant of sorts from GospelbeacH’s first album Pacific Surf Line. “Nothing Ever Changes” rocks harder than the most of the album but still softened by the soul of an organ, a tinkle of piano and the “ooo-ooo” of background vocals.
There might be some personal messages in these songs but the main takeaway from Let It Burn is that hippie music is good for the soul. Always has been.
Let It Burn is due out on October 4, 2019 from Alive Naturalsound.
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