Graham Brown Band - Let Me In (2018)

Graham Brown Band celebrated the release of Let Me In with a show at LanaLou’s last month. I guess no one told Brown and company that, according to Spotify and Bandcamp and, well, literally everyone else, the record actually came out in the spring of 2018.

No matter. If they want to pretend it’s a brand-new album, we’ll play along. Such is Brown’s sound, though, that Let Me In could have come out 10 or 20 years ago, or more. When your touchstones are Tom Petty, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and the Band, the notion of timeliness probably doesn’t seem particularly relevant. Brown—who has been making music for decades, having started out in such acts as Jr. Gone Wild and Happy Man—is more interested in timelessness. Or, at the very least, honouring his rock and country forebears by carrying the “classic” torch.

He has certainly surrounded himself with the right personnel. Multi-instrumentalist Rob Blackburn is probably Graham Brown Band’s most potent weapon, laying down Duane Allman–worthy guitar licks on “Realize” and dipping into Garth Hudson territory for some swirly organ pyrotechnics on “Never Blue”. The rhythm section of Mark Gruft (drums) and John Werner (bass) is none too shabby, either, kicking “Hole in My Heart” into cowpunk country and bringing a jazzy shuffle to “Gasoline”.

In other words, if roots music is your jam, you’re not likely to give a damn whether Let Me In came out in 2018, 2005, or 1990. You’re just going to dig it.