Ric Robertson – Carolina Child
Free Dirt Records – 30 July 2021
Born in North Carolina and now based in New Orleans, Ric Robertson describes himself as a “swamp soulja”. On his new album Carolina Child, which Dan Molad of Lucius produced, he is joined by a host of friends that include Jess Wolfe, Holly Laessig, Dori Freeman, Oliver Wood, and more, with the music ranging across the Americana spectrum.
The album draws inspiration from meaningful small moments and the fragility of our inner lives. It opens with the echoey vocal of the loping post-breakup Getting Over Our Love as he wonders who his ex is hanging out with now, the track taking a brief excursion into shimmering cosmic synth and strings psychedelia midway. It’s more straightforward with the slow country honky-tonk piano and brushed drums shuffle of Harmless Feeling, Woods on slide, pursuing a similar theme, seeing the light on at his ex’s “while another sleeps so sound in my bed”.
Riding a puttering rhythmic ripple, the softly sung title-track Carolina Child (more bruised hearts) has a soulful vibe, the love letter to his younger self inspired by a nickname given him by fellow singer Esther Rose. His penchant for psychedelia resurfaces with Sycamore Hill with its whispered title intro over synth ambience with Logan Ledger providing guest vocals before it heads into a lazy New Orleans groove and good life lyrics about half-smoked spliffs, bedtime tokes, stew on the stove “and a record on deck and a bottle of wine”. The Big Easy is also the source for Thinkin’ About You; a lurching rhythm fingerpicked acoustic blues, born of standing on a balcony and watching rainbows being refracted from an oil slick on the city street (“there’s a rainbow in the gutter and another in the sky one is made up of the muck, the other of the light reflected on a spectrum through a recent rainy sky”) with a lyric that mentions a Fibonacci sequence in the context of another relationship that didn’t stay the course.
With Sam Fribush on organ, the undulating rhythm of the melancholic Anna Rose takes a storytelling approach about a woman whose life has fallen and apart and “spends her evenings on the couch alone sleeping by the big screen TV glow” with “the only people coming by her place are delivering wine to her doorstep” as she gets high “hangin’ on a codeine kitestring”.
There are two covers on the album, the first a dreamily lilting arrangement of Blue Yonder frontman John Lilly’s My Love Never Sleeps featuring Fribush on Wurlitzer with Eddie Barbash on sax and Robertson giving it some guitar solo stick in the playout. The second is a rockabilly gospel romp through Jonathan Henley’s Rollin’ River with some pumping barrelhouse piano, Robertson’s guitar licks and Nate Leath on fiddle, encouraging you to add yours to the handclaps.
The spirit of Dr John permeates the lazing New Orleans jazzy soul of I Don’t Mind, carried on piano, organ and some squally sax, Freeman and Gina Leslie providing backing. The album ends on the bluesy organ dawn breaking, last slow dance ballad Julie as “the whiskey wears off and the band winds it down”, and its lovers hold on to the illusion before daylight brings them back to reality. The song closes in a rowdy, guitar, bass and drums cacophony. Mellow down with Ric Robertson’s smokey vocals and let his soulful, country-tinted melodies carry you along. This makes for a sweet listen.
Carolina Child is out now: https://lnk.to/carolinachild
Photo Credit: Gina Leslie