Album review - Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats
Across his first three records, Nathaniel Rateliff was just another Americana troubadour armed with a twanging guitar and a husky singing voice. But he rips it up and starts again on album number four, recruiting a six piece soul crew and adopting the rambunctious persona of a bar-room blues crooner from back in the day.
Arriving with the blessing of storied soul label Stax, the experiment is mostly a success. Rateliff sounds like a wild west Nick Cave on ‘Howling At Nothing’. Elsewhere he evokes Otis Redding on Look It Here and, with single S.O.B., explores the artistic potential of bottomless self-pity (“Son of a bitch get me a drink,” he yelps, sounding like he means it).
