Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Backlash
Release Date: Feb 10, 2017
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Record label: Black Joe Lewis
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Album Review: Backlash by Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
Whenever someone listens to Black Joe Lewis and his band the Honeybears, the inevitable laundry list of comparisons to funk, blues and soul artists of yesteryear is spouted wistfully. These appraisals are not lacking in validity, for Lewis has released a steady flow of good music relying heavily on a nostalgic blend of genres. Increasingly, though, his work has relied less and less on past ideas up to his 2013 release, and it is on his most recent album Backlash that Lewis seems to have made an abridgment to the stylistic road he had close to worn down.
Based on rating 7/10
On his fifth album, 2017's Backlash, Black Joe Lewis takes a few steps forward and a few steps back. After dropping the band name the Honeybears (but without dropping the band itself) on 2013's Electric Slave, Lewis is once again using the group moniker. And, as if to further reassure folks that Lewis is still fronting a first-class soul revue, the performances on Backlash sound especially taut and emphatic, with horn players Derek Phelps (trumpet) and Joseph Woullard (baritone sax) making the most of the band's rough-and-ready grooves.
Based on rating 3.5/5
Call it garage/punk/soul if you have to label Black Joe Lewis' hard-charging attack. And there is little doubt that if Iggy Pop, one of his main inspirations, were to start an R&B band, it would sound a lot like Lewis' tough, loud, brash, fist-in-your-face music. Little has changed on album number five from Lewis and his crew. Perhaps the distorted, raw power of his previous release, 2013's Electric Slave, has been smoothed out just a touch for this follow-up nearly four years later.
Based on rating 6.0/10
Black Joe Lewis trawls the intersection of blues, soul, funk, and garage rock--a well-traveled juncture. But he has a few strategies to make this timeworn mixture more tangy on his new album, Backlash . The first is vocal: Lewis can unleash a stirring scream, a cauterizing billow of noise that's sure to flutter your nervous system. The second is compositional: he likes shifting dynamics so that a slack song suddenly stiffens and lashes out, like a horse kicking an inconsiderate handler.
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