Coast to Coast Motel
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Modern-day bluesman G. Love, known to more skeptical ears as 23-year-old blue-eyed devil Garrett Dutton, shone briefly as hip-hop's great white hope when he released a debut record that paired blues-based playing with vocals that approximated rap. Though he was initially grouped with acts like Beck and Soul Coughing--pale faces who flirted with hip-hop but stuck to rock esthetics--we know now that young Master Dutton has far less in common with those inventive postmodernists than he does with, say, Jamie Walters, the pretty-boy pop dullard of Beverly Hills 90210 fame.Coast to Coast Motel, the singer/guitarist's second shot with his bass and drums ensemble Special Sauce, does not even grant us the minor pleasures of his debut's "blues rap" novelty. This time, Mr. G focuses primarily on the R&B sounds of New Orleans, where the band recorded the album. That G. Love counts John Hammond Jr. an inspiration is telling: What Coast to Coast Motel offers is bratty suburban recreations of Hammond's competent but uninspired blueblood appropriations of classic blues music. New Special Sauce tunes like "Kiss & Tell" and "Bye Bye Baby" are absolutely fine but inauthentic and unnecessary given the breadth of great blues already available to motivated listeners. And any college-educated kid, like Garrett, who insists on singing with the slurred drawl of elderly sharecroppers needs to be slapped silly. --Roni Sarig
Tracks
| 1 | Sweet Sugar Mama |
| 2 | Leaving The City |
| 3 | Nancy |
| 4 | Kiss and Tell |
| 5 | Chains #3 |
| 6 | Sometimes |
| 7 | Everybody |
| 8 | Soda Pop |
| 9 | Bye Bye Baby |
| 10 | Tomorrow Night |
| 11 | Small Fish |
| 12 | Coming Home |
