Lenny McDaniel
Two Sides
Café Au Lait Music
By Robert Fontenot
Lenny
McDaniel is a good singer, an excellent instrumentalist (especially
on guitar), and a producer of major-label ability. What he does best,
however, is write, and since New Orleans can use all the songwriters
it can get these days, that makes him an especially valuable commodity.
This solo CD, his seventh since returning to the Crescent City after
years as an El Lay sessionman, doesn’t quite live up to the “Quintessential
Rhythm and Blues for the New Millennium” tag plastered all over
it. It is, however, one of the better soul-blues albums you’ll
hear this year. And that ain’t hay.
You won’t find any
great lyrical insights in Two Sides, which, like a lot of recent releases
from his peers, casts a jaundiced eye at the state of the post-9/11
world. Unless you weren’t aware that some ghetto kids are “Armed & Dangerous” or
that the world could use more “Love & Understandin’,” that
is. But who cares, especially when Lenny demonstrates his flair for
the pop-soul hook on the kind of sentiments everyone can get into,
like on the best track here, “Range Of Emotions.” When
he laments, “It gave you power when you made me cry,” it’s
easy to see why he’s represented by one of the largest music
publishers in the country.
As for the finished product, McDaniel returns
to his blue-eyed soul roots on “Two Sides,” eschewing his
recent forays into straight blues and Latin music. For someone on that
rare New Orleans—Los Angeles axis, he has a lot of Memphis in
him, and although it comes out more naturally through his axe than
his throat (dig the way he overextends himself vocally on the opening
title track), it’s as genuine as polished, professional product
like this gets. Lenny McDaniel may be better known to industry types
than housewives, but it’s not for lack of talent. Or, for that
matter, sincerity.
Reprinted from - offBEAT
Magazine
