Release date: Sep 17 2017
Label: Drag City
Country: USA
“Dead Rider are up and rolling again, and Crew Licks is the latest job. After the thousand days and nights since Chills on Glass, Dead Rider had to overcome the creeping suggestion that they multitask themselves to sleep – or to premature brain death, whichever came first. Now they’re ready to get into their Rolling Stones suit and thank you for letting them be themselves again; to extrude rude grooves, shattered r’n’b and mother’s blues in a priapic triad. Tripped-out and overlaid, shedding the old fresh in search of new flesh, Crew Licks is a gateway they’ve been dreaming of building in their minds. If you’re lacking for rhythm and imagination in your everyday nine-to-five, Dead Rider got the time for you!
Just give a listen to the first single, a torched/scorched/morphed, does-this-even-count-as-a-cover?-cover evoking ghosts of the Dead. The beat of “Ramble on Rose” is lode-bearing, brick-house solid, but flexible and with room to breath. The groove creeps and wafts through the room with the gloss of eternal rhythm and blues, swelling the shades of a dusty, aphrodisiac evening.
Crew Licks steers through the cracks with stuttered words and whispers, the pealing of a steel drum, a squalling sax or two, barks from the outside. Crew foreman Todd Rittmann twines them with a cabling of acid-base guitar licks, cutting down into the roots for fingerings to invert and extend. Whether you take five or take powder, artistic achievement and fun aren’t mutually exclusive. And even if you didn’t invent the wheel –good for you putting on the spinner rims. Out September 22nd, chumps!”