Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats soar at sold-out Rave
Soul music will never go out of style, and there’s been no shortage of new groups storming stages in recent years.
Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats is one of them. Perhaps, the most successful one of them at the moment.
The band’s appearance Tuesday at the Rave — for WLUM-FM’s annual Big Spring Show, and in support of the group’s sophomore album, “Tearing at the Seams” — has been sold out for several weeks, and the Milwaukee venue is one of the smallest the band’s played during its amphitheater-andarena-heavy tour.
So what’s behind the Night Sweats’ standout success? Live at the Rave, the Denver group showed it’s definitely got the goods.
Slyly flexing their gifts during simmering set opener and “Seams” track “Shoe Boot” — from Joseph Pope III’s deep bass riffs to Scott Frock’s mariachi flair on trumpet to Mark Schusterman’s organ purr — it didn’t take long for the Night Sweats’ eight members to strut their stuff.
“Coolin’ Out” turned up the heat, with Schusterman leading sax players Jeff Dazey and Andreas Wild through some freewheeling Dixieland jazz, and Rateliff and lead guitarist Luke Mossman locking in for a reverb-dipped, rough-and-tumble blues guitar duel.
Rateliff was strapped into a guitar for most of the 80-minute set’s 19 songs, but his voice — equal measure gruff and honeyed — was his greatest instrument, given plenty of room to shine for a solo acoustic interpretation of “I’d Be Waiting.”
And when he didn’t have the guitar, he could be quite the nimble showman, swiftly shuffling his feet across the stage, without breaking a sweat, for “Out on the Weekend,” which climaxed with Rateliff smashing his tambourine to smithereens.
But a firecracker set is a basic requirement if you want to cut it as a soul group, and there are scores of contemporaries that match the Night Sweats’ energetic showmanship.
The real distinctive factor, I’d argue, isn’t blatantly apparent, but it’s also right there in name: the Night Sweats. This is soul music for our anxious times.
It’s a great genre to turn to for jubilant celebration and heart-wrenching pathos, but it’s not the first musical style that comes to mind when your skin is crawling or your heart is racing or you’re so overwhelmed with fear you want to scream at the top of your lungs.
Rateliff and company are at their best when they turn relatable worry into cathartic crowd-pleasers.
During “You Worry Me,” the lead single off “Seams,” Rateliff Tuesday was rejuvenated, singing of finding some relief by letting things go (”I’m going to leave it all out there to dry”), and that’s maybe where another soul group might end it. But Rateliff faced anxiety head-on, singing, “You seem tired today/Were you up all night afraid of what the future might bring?”
And it’s only fitting that the band’s most thrilling song is its most nervewracking: Tuesday showstopper “S.O.B.,” with Rateliff singing of alcohol withdrawal, desperate for a hand to hold, and for someone to hold him down.
“My heart was breaking/hands were shaking/Bugs were crawling all over me,” Rateliff passionately sang Tuesday, the crowd belting and clapping along like they were at a swinging Sunday church service in the deep South.
During these stressful times, who doesn’t feel like they could use a drink? Tuesday night, Rateliff & the Night Sweats offered a healthier way to take the edge off.