Soledad Brothers – The Hardest Walk [Splatter Vinyl] – New LP

LIMITED SPLATTER EDITION 2021. The band fifth and final studio album from 2005. OUT OF PRINT FOR MORE THAN A DECADE.  

The Soledad Brothers' fifth album, The Hardest Walk, opens with "Truth or Consequences," a solid and gloriously raunchy slice of blues-shot rock & roll that recalls the Rolling Stones in their Sticky Fingers/Exile on Main St. glory days with its gutsy guitar lines and horn accents. But the Soledad Brothers don't seem to be channeling the sound of the Stones so much as their approach on The Hardest Walk. Like those abovementioned albums, The Hardest Walk isn't afraid to make with the rock, and with the band expanded to a quartet for these sessions with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Dechman, songs like "Crooked Crown" and "Good Feeling" are rich and full bodied without sounding cluttered or losing the spaces around the notes. But just as the Stones found as much hard groove and hard soul in their slow and quiet numbers as the rockers, the Soledad Brothers explore the sense of dynamics they discovered on 2003's Voice of Treason, and "Crying Out Loud (Tears of Joy)," "Let Me Down," "True to Zou Zou," and the title song are late-night numbers that add a potent atmosphere to the disc that straight-up guitar wail couldn't have brought them. The Soledad Brothers have obviously learned that their musical world does not begin and end with the messed-up blues-rock of their early days, and The Hardest Walk sounds like their most satisfying offering to date.

REPRESS LIMITED EDITION OF 500 ON SWIRL VINYL WITH INNER SLEEVE!  OUT OF PRINT FOR MORE THAN A DECADE! 

Discover or rediscover the band fifth and final studio album. 

Thanks in large part to singer-guitarist Johnny Walker’s soulful delivery, the Soledads are just as convincing when they stroll as when they chug, and such psychedelic numbers as “Loup Garou” and the sitar-meets-pedal-steel “True to Zou Zou” show that, despite a major debt to Jagger-Richards, the brothers have also paid attention to Brian Jones’s contribution to the late-‘60s Stones. – Mark Jenkins / The WASHINGTON POST

The Motor City’s newest hitmakers. – Lauren Gitlin / ROLLING STONE

An album filled with many pleasantly surprising “one of these things is not like the others” moments. – Dan McIntosh / POPMATTERS

They remained cool enough right up to the end. – Joseph Neff / The VINYL DISTRICT