JT & The Clouds
Caledonia
Dishrag Records
Hard edged fusion of Pop, Americana and Soul – lots of SOUL!
JT & The Clouds is really the mop haired Jeremy ‘JT’ Lindsay and a huge Entourage of musical friends from in and around Chicago.
CALEDONIA is JT’s fourth album but the guy never sits still and onstantly re-invents himself and tours continuously under a number of different guises; most recently in the UK with two thirds of Po’ Girl and they took every UK Festival they appeared at by storm last year.
I have to admit that this album very nearly spoiled my wife’s Christmas as I played it so often she couldn’t get near to the stereo to play her Simply X-factor stuff!
Every song on CALEDONIA is worthy of its place on the album and each track sounds sufficiently different from the one that precedes it to make listening an exciting experience for once; which isn’t true of every cd I listened to in 2010.
JT & The Clouds certainly fit into the ‘Americana’ category as they couldn’t come from anywhere else but the United States of America but there is more than a hint of high quality ‘English poppiness’ throughout too (think Squeeze and XTC) and when you mix in bucketfuls of S-O-U-L you have the JT & The Clouds ‘sound’.
Top tracks? Phew; that really is difficult. How it Runs could be the great lost Tom Petty song; Low July is as sultry piece of music as I’ve heard in years, Funeral twists and turns so many times it will make you dizzy; title track Caledonia takes up where Buffalo Springfield left off and Nobody Wants to be Alone that closes the album could be Al Green fronting the E-Street Band!
CALEDONIA has got 2011 off to a great start for me and by the time you are reading this JT & The Clouds will be touring the UK – don’t miss them. You’ll kick yourself if you do.
The Rocking Magpie 