Vintage Trouble - The Bomb Shelter Sessions

Someone posted a video of Vintage Trouble doing their high-energy soul of “Blues Hand Me Down” and I was pretty blown away! There are a number of groups doing similar styles these days and these cats are doing it right – a James Brown-styled singer with an excellent voice (Ty Taylor) backed by a 3 piece, white rock’n’roll band (Nalle Colt – guitar, Rick Dill – bass and Richard Danielson on drums). They put together a stylish, tight mix of rock, punk & soul that would fit in with groups such as the Bell Rays, The Heavy, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. VT has a bit more rock in their rock’n’soul (nothing wrong with that!), but still plenty of coolness.

Not everything on the record is as up-tempo as the opener, but all have a great sound and groove. There are some cool steals throughout (nothing blatant, but nice references to older white & black r’n’b tunes) and a number of different feels. “Nancy Lee” is built around a sexy, swinging beat and a bluesy guitar line and they’ve done a steamy video for this one. The ballad, “Gracefully” is not as successful to my ears, but “You Better Believe It” is a nice mid-tempo groover with more cool guitar licks. Unfortunately, this is followed by two more ballads – not that these are bad, but I find myself wanting to rock’n’bop more.

“Jezzebella” is similar in style to “You Better Believe It” – rock riffs, not too fast, not too slow – with some interesting arrangement work. More of rockin’ stomper is “Total Strangers” – one of the highlights of the record! But then they close with still another ballad, though it has some strong guitar work. Again, the slwo numbers are not bad songs, but the band is an exciting, high-energy rock’n’soul band when they want to be, so it is a bit disappointing when they slow it down to a crawl, even if the tunes are good.

All in all, a fine debut, but I think they need to build up the power a bit more and show the world that they are a fun, thrilling, rockin’ dance band. I hope to see them in person soon, so we’ll see how this all translates in a live setting.