The Breakdown
Jazz four-piece The Fabulous Red Diesel has released their new album ‘Goddess The Seahorse’ – a luscious blend of emotional songwriting, moments of springing joyous fun, and others of melancholic reflection.
Opening with the jiving ‘Summer End’, the band quickly displays the vibrant jazz instrumentation featured across the album. A walking double bass line, swinging drums, warming piano, and bright brass underpin the silky, ever-urgent, and infectious yet emotive lead vocals. As the track reaches its chorus, a brilliant earworm melody enters, delivering an unexpected hook that lasts well after the first listen.
Elsewhere on the album, ‘Joe Cool’ keeps up the bouncing light energy of the two opening tracks, this time introducing a wah-wah lead guitar under the swelling layers of vocal harmonies and soaring, totally gorgeous lead vocals. There’s no doubt that after the first three tracks of the album, this is a band with bags of talent, both as writers and performers.
At the album’s midpoint, the band starts to emphasize the slower, more moody side of their writing, the side that I feel is their strongest. On both ‘Vessel’ and the album’s standout ‘Symmetry’, the band showcases a beautiful ability to capture depth in emotion musically. Layers of warming instrumentation create a pillowy bed for the silky, melancholic, yet gritty, and defiant lead vocals.
It’s hard to remember a time I listened to an album built around organic jazz instrumentation and came away with so many songs stuck in my head. This album is proof that jazz can be poppy and catchy, and that’s one of the main things which I find so brilliant and unique about The Fabulous Red Diesel. It’s soulful, wonderful jazz with subtle yet nonetheless shameless and wonderful vocal hooks.
Through the latter stages of the album, The Fabulous Red Diesel works through more of their upbeat, jiving tones across the vibrant bop ‘Grooving Around’, to the slightly psychedelic ‘Boneyard’, to the upbeat, witty, and cutting jive that everyone needs after a long week at work, ‘Thank-You’.
Closing with the delicate beauty ‘Somewhere Beautiful’, the band finishes on a sumptuous, elegant, and emotive note – fittingly beautiful, at their silky best!
With 14 brilliant tracks showcasing musical depth, excellent musicianship, and some stunning and truly hypnotic vocal performances, ‘Goddess The Seahorse’ is a brilliant effort from a band who has more than proved that they can deliver the same high level of performance live as they do on record. Sophisticated, emotionally attuned, and sonically rich, the album is full of highs and lows, a fine example of what this brilliant four-piece is capable of.
Listen below:
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