Album Review: Undivided Heart & Soul by JD McPherson

Over the past seven years, two LPs and countless tours, JD McPherson has gained a reputation for updating the American rockabilly sound. With his fat, fuzzed-out riffs (usually played on a custom TK Smith guitar or other funky bodied, automobile inspired axe) and accompaniments from upright bassist Jimmy Sutton, keyboardist Ray Jacildo, drummer Jason Smay and a touring brass section, McPherson.

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Early in the recording of his third full-length album, 2017's spirited Undivided Heart & Soul, JD McPherson paused the process to take Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme up on his offer to come jam at his studio in what amounted to a kind of creative jump-start -- a way to get the juices flowing again. While it's unclear if anything they played made it onto Undivided Heart & Soul, it certainly sounds like it could have. Rife with gritty R&B tones and a driving punk energy, the album sounds like something QOTSA might have made if they'd come into their own in the '60s garage rock era instead of the alt-rock 2000s.

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Nobody would have complained if JD McPherson recorded his third album with the same basic approach as his first two. After all, the rollicking rootsy rocking he and his band established tapped into a retro niche that found a dedicated audience and yielded reams of positive press. But that wasn.

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