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The Neville Brothers
WALKIN’ IN THE SHADOWS OF LIFE
(Back Porch)
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It’s been a tough few years for New Orleans’s flagship band. Not only did keyboardist Art Neville suffer from a back injury that almost benched him for keeps, but the group went four years without a new album and switched to a greatest-hits format on stage, dropping nearly everything from their more ambitious ’90s discs. Worse, the brothers started taking turns doing their own material, sacrificing the family chemistry they’ve relied on in the past. This out-of-nowhere comeback sounds like a darker, swampier answer to their best album, 1986’s Yellow Moon. After hiring a long string of producers who tried in vain to impart a commercial sheen to the Nevilles’ New Orleans sound, the band brought in Aaron’s son (and regular Keith Richards sideman) Ivan Neville, and it was the right move. Ivan brings his own skills to the table — the funky grooves and chunky keyboards of his solo albums — but leaves the brothers’ personalities up front. All four swap lead vocals on most tracks; Charles’s flute adds a vintage blaxploitation feel; and for once, nobody feels obliged to give Aaron an adult-contemporary ballad. (His one feature is a worthy version of the reggae standard "Rivers of Babylon.") The other familiar tune, the Temptations’ "Ball of Confusion," gets a few timely lyric updates, substituting "OutKast’s new record’s a gas" for the line about the Beatles. But mainly it stays keyed into the song’s still timely anti-war and poverty references. And that’s appropriate for an album that’s largely about rising above in a dangerous time, its layers of rhythms conveying both foreboding and joy. In other words, it’s the real New Orleans — and the real Nevilles — instead of the tourist version.
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