Nick Curran & The Nitelifes - Nitelife Boogie (CD)

All Music Guide

If Fixin' Your Head's grainy, vintage sound turned a lot of heads, Nitelife Boogie will certainly put more than a few blues fiends into neck braces. Utilizing vintage recording equipment and a live performance aesthetic, guitarist/singer Nick Curran reinterprets jump blues classics along with rarities and originals in the exact style of the original recordings. This guy uses Murray's Superior Hair Dressing on his pompadour, wears some snappy vintage threads, and is backed by a tight rhythm section and two tenor saxophones. Scenesters will certainly appreciate his adherence to vintage style, but Curran's chops are no cute trend. Like a mad-blues hungry-scientist's clone hybrid of Little Richard and T-Bone Walker, it's uncanny how much Curran sounds like his post-war blues idols. But rather than coming off as a staid, neo-traditionalist, Curran imbues each track with a fresh urgency lacking in many modern blues releases. In fact, even on his originals like the raunchy and wrong "She's Fifteen," Curran often improves his idols' approach, by distilling and magnifying the catchy and gritty elements that make jump blues so compelling. He takes on Johnny "Guitar" Watson's bizarre instro "Space Guitar," bettering the original with interesting reverb on/reverb off production tweaks. Similarly, there's a rebellious, punk-like exuberance in the way Curran's microphone distorts during the frenzied gospel-shouts of Lloyd Price's raucous "I'm Glad, Glad." If it wasn't a classic before, it is now.

- Matt Collar, All Music Guide