No doubt about it, discovering an authentic soul band with the right nuances and lacking of clichés – can really make my week.
This is how I felt when I first listened to the brilliant JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound, a band that originally established to form a multi racial band that will deal with fun, politics and sex. Lots of sex.
JC Brooks’s can’t leave you indifferent. Influenced by Wilson Picket and Sam Cook, where the band itself plays indie rock and post punk mixed with a black soul, fun and sexy. It’s so good and dripping, you really gotta have it.
Beat Of Our Own Drum is their first album, released last year and it’s one heck of a super-duper soul bomb, butt-shacker, aggressive, smooth and smoky. Listening to the album kept bringing to mind the wonderful garage band The Dirtbombs. In both bands, there are garage elements, but while the Bombs are pure garage, Brooks and the band mix it with White Stripes, Creedence and Motown.
Aside for the album, they’re giving away a b-side – Wilco‘s song – I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. This song, usually related to unfunctional relationships, gets a sharp twist and becomes a colorful celebration of a break up. Breaking up is fun to do.
Baltimore Is The New Brooklyn
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I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
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Nice! The Uptown Sound has some shows comin’ up:
The Frequency, Madison, Wisconsin, March 5, 2010
Blues Moose Tap, Iowa City, Iowa, March 6, 2010
Tonic Room, Chicago, IL, March 10, 2010
Tonic Room, Chicago, IL, March 24, 2010