It's not often your reviewer's ears prick up when confronted by virtuosity, but when you combine it with the sort of magical Cosmic Americana hybrid worked up by masterful Californians RANCHO DELUXE, it's hard not to sit up and take notice.
It's not everything, of course, but pedigree helps and certainly RD's mainstays Mark Adams (vocals/ guitar/ songs) and Jesse Jay Harris (guitars/mandolin/ vocals/ songs) have Roots-rock flowing like blue blood through their veins. Long-time college chums who formed the band in 2005, they have some advantages to draw upon. For one thing, Jesse's Dad is none other than Greg Harris: former Flying Burrito Brother and man about town on the pioneering early '70s L.A country-rock scene. Secondly, this enables them to rope in some stellar guests like pedal steel meister Jay Dee Maness (Buck Owens, Gram Parsons) and keyboard player Skip Edwards (Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam) to sit in on their album sessions.
Nonetheless, even these impressive credentials would count for Diddley Squat were the source material less than startling. And, believe me, Rancho Deluxe are the real, Californian deal, armed with musicianship and songs to die for. Add to this a lurking pop sensibility and a strong production, emphasising both the natural, 'band playing together in a room' feel and a 21st Century modernity and we've got an absolute doozy of an album on our hands.
Really, it's more a question of what Rancho Deluxe CAN'T do within a Roots-Rock framework. Across the course of this terrific 55 minutes, they hit us with a potent distillation of country-rock and power pop ('Hard Time', 'It's Too Late'); keep an eye on catchy radio hits ('Mercy Me') and even effortlessly wheel out the sort of wistful honky-tonk balladry ('Best Of The Fray') this reviewer thought had died with Gram out in Joshua Tree.
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And that's all just for starters. Elsewhere, Rancho knock us sideways when they dig into funky, bar-room rockers ('Ghost Town') or marry blue-collar pop two-steps with full-blooded, banjo-led hoedowns ('Maintenance Man') without even flinching. Bearing in mind the quality of all these tunes, it's hard to imagine RD's instrumentals could possibly surpass them, but the fingers-flyin' brilliance of the bluegrass-influenced 'Bone Rock Breakdown' and simply phenomenal 'Templeton Gap' are enough to take your breath away. Both are influenced by Louisville every bit as much as Laurel Canyon and if you close your eyes, you'd think Clarence White had been resurrected when you hear them. Yeah, they really are that good.
Crucially, though, the virtuosity never detracts from the resonant quality of the songs and when they pull it all together for songs like the sighing, Western epic of the title track or the plaintive, alcohol-soaked loneliness of the closing 'Whiskey and Saturday Nights' it's hard to imagine a roots-rock right now who can touch Rancho Deluxe. As they say on the instructive 'Stop When You're 80': “you do what you love, and love what you do..so who cares what other people are thinkin' about you?” It's all you need to know about Mark Adams and Jesse Jay Harris and it makes it quite clear that they're in this for the long haul. Your reviewer won't be the only one coming to the conclusion that this is great news indeed.
(http://www.myspace.com/ranchodeluxe)
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