Album Review: Lickety Split by Robert Randolph & the Family Band

For Robert Randolph & the Family Band, the three year break after 2010's somewhat stilted-sounding We Walk This Road was well deserved. By Randolph's own admission, their 280 date-per-year touring pace had taken its toll: playing music, let alone trying to find time to create it, had become a chore. Their Blue Note debut, Lickety Split, features an expanded FB lineup that includes vocalist Lenesha Randolph and guitarist Brett Haas; the group has gone back to its earliest recorded efforts for inspiration while furthering their new music considerably.

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The animation of Robert Randolph is incredible to behold. Whether taking in one of his six albums or catching the live experience, Randolph is perhaps the only artist equally at home on a summer festival stage or a Pentecostal tent meeting. Either way, there’s no denying that a Robert Randolph release is a spirited affair. Randolph’s last proper studio release was a masterwork with T.

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Since bursting into public consciousness, sacred steel prodigy Robert Randolph has straddled the worlds of the holy and the profane. On the jam band circuit, the flashy performer has ignited festivals with his note-bending steel play, making them swell, quiver and thrash under his slide. Yet, at his core, Randolph comes from the church, and that gospel truth can never be washed away.

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I’ve seen them live. The gospel-infused funky rock roots band that commandingly whips a crowd of drug-laced earth muffins and hopheads into some sort of a revivalist frenzy. .. that’s the Family Band I’ve seen. If you haven’t witnessed the fury of true black gospel music (from ANY ….

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The song that opens “Amelita” (Columbia) — the second album by Court Yard Hounds, due out on Tuesday — is “Sunshine,” a honey-dipped poison dart aimed at the sort of person who rains on every parade. “Tonight you’ll grace us all with your inner presence,” Emily Robison sings over an acoustic guitar, “While your backhanded compliments let the air out of the room.” Then comes the chorus, a summery burst of melody, led by a harmonized “Hey,” that leaves no doubt as to who’ll have the last word. Ms.

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Robert Randolph & the Family Band Lickety Split (Blue Note) Last time joyful noise proprietor Robert Randolph walked out the studio, he brandished 2010's star-studded, T Bone Burnett-produced We Walk This Road, a measured reevaluation of the molten gospel funk that the pedal steel guitarist had pushed for the past dozen years. Lickety Split, the Jersey native's first release since a live set in 2011, packs much of that improvisational concert feeling into its 12 tracks, so consider 33-year-old Randolph "Born Again. " Action fires from the get-go, "Amped Up" declaring Randolph and his band – cousin Marcus, departed bassist/cousin Danyel, Brett Haas, and Randolph's sister Lanesha, who stars vocally on the slow and pristine "New Orleans" – have arrived to "start a party in here.

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