JD Simo JD Simo
Crows Feet Records
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 Chicagoborn, 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, The Movement, dips into early 70s Marvin Gaye/Curtis Mayfield territory, not least due to his strong falsetto voice and a cracking soul groove. Love 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 Out Of Sight – good-time funk, indeed. The huge-sounding groove and fuzz guitar on Higher Plane is both impressive and very infectious – recalling Lenny Kravitz in the early 90s but at the next level. As for lead single, One Of These Days, his Curtis Mayfield leanings are well to the fore here – beautiful clean chord guitar playing and sweet falsetto singing. Then you get to Take That, a short instrumental that sees JD playing crazy up-tempo country guitar 16ths against a rock ’n’ roll train rhythm, quite jaw-dropping.
If you’re looking for a new song-centred artist with great taste and energy, JD Simo is simply fantastic. Recommended!
Standout track: Higher Plane
For fans of: Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Lenny Kravitz