Eli “Paperboy” Reed & the True Loves

Roll With You

Q-Dee/Q Division Records

By Bud Scoppa

If somebody played you “Stake Your Claim,” the perfectly titled opening cut on Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s new album Roll With You without any context, and you heard a gritty voiced singer testifying in front of a pile-driving rhythm section and a bodaciously wailing horn section, you’d automatically assume this steamy soul stew was cut in Memphis or Muscle Shoals 40 years ago. There’s no way it could be the work of a 24-year-old, baby-faced Jewish kid from Boston and his equally young and white seven-piece soul revue, the True Loves, could it? But then, you probably had the same reaction the first time you heard the uncannily soulful English singer Amy Winehouse fronting Brooklyn funkateers the Dap-Kings last year, or more recently, when encountering by chance the 21-year-old Welsh newcomer Duffy riding the “Gimme Some Lovin’”-style groove of her song “Mercy.”

If Winehouse opened the door, Reed and his finger-lickin’-good combo kick it wide open, channeling their collective obsessiveness of southern soul into a stunningly nuanced statement of identity that’s way too immediate to come off as secondhand. Not only have they gotten everything right, down to the last behind-the-beat snare hit and Memphis Horns flourish, they’ve also managed to fully inhabit soul cosmology as if they’d been born to it. This is balls-to-the-wall genre music, with no apologies. And why not? As genres go, this one ain’t chopped liver.

Because Reed wasn’t born to it, he did the next best thing, heading straight down to the Mississippi Delta after graduating from high school, not just to make a pilgrimage but to live right there in the birthplace of the blues. After spending nearly a year in the hallowed town of Clarksdale, sucking up the vibe at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 while gutsily performing in area juke joints and roadhouses, he retraced the steps of his blues and soul heroes, heading to Chicago’s Southside, where he got the gig as “minister of music” for the congregation of a small holiness church while also DJing a weekly radio show—and you can be sure he wasn’t spinning Jack Johnson or My Chemical Romance.

While this devotion doesn’t fully explain how the kid got that voice—which is closest in its raw silkiness to that of Sam Cooke, though you can pick up chunks of Wilson Picket, David Ruffin and other greats as well—it does suggest how hard Reed was willing to dig to find the deep gut groove. That he was successful in his quest is deliciously apparent in these supercharged performances. Here and there the singer acrobatically reaches up right past the top of his register to grab a goosebump falsetto howl, like Willy Mays leaping to snag a deep fly just as it’s about to sail over the centerfield wall.

Cut to analog tape, natch, Roll With You is a joyride through the R&B landscape, as the band and its sharkskin-suited frontman hit James Brown and the JB’s so hard on “The Satisfier” that you can practically see a spent Paperboy sinking to one knee in the blazing outro—somebody throw a cape around him!—while bringing the joyous momentum of Sam & Dave’s “Hold On I’m Coming” to “I’m Gonna Getcha Back.” Reed channels Otis on the hickory-smoked shuffle “Am I Wasting My Time,” even working the iconic phrase “I’ve been lovin’ you too long” into the chorus, and again on the aching ballad “(Am I Just) Fooling Myself.” The refrains of both songs are posed as if Reed is questioning whether he’s worthy to take up the mantle of this legend, finding his answer in the moment, while delivering with sweat-dripping urgency. The album closes as ferociously as it opened, with the peeling-rubber powerhouse “(Doin’ the Boom Boom).”

What’s revelatory about Roll With You is that it’s no mere homage to vintage R&B, not any more than the recordings of the mid-’60s Stones, who didn’t stop at aping those precious sides from Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters but instead rolled around in the mud with this music until they were caked in it, and something fresh appeared. Don’t look now, but it’s happening again, 45 years down the road.

There’s a lot more where this platter came from. Like the Explorers Club out of Charleston, South Carolina, who have turned an obsession with everything Beach Boys into the intricately detailed and utterly beguiling modern pop album Freedom Wind (Dead Oceans). Also coming soon is Sunshine Lies (Shout! Factory) by the veteran revivalist Matthew Sweet, who stacks billowing Beach Boys harmonies against the jangly overtones of Byrds-y 12-string guitars. You may have already heard Consoler of the Lonely by Jack White’s Raconteurs, who cut a wide swath through late-’60s rock, from Led Zep to Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Like Roll With You, these albums don’t feel studied or flat—they’re as vibrant and heartfelt as the records that inspired them. They make today’s digitally refracted recordings seem as flat as a pancake—and Winehouse’s breakthrough indicates there’s a sizable audience out there hungering for more.

As more and more righteously retro young bands pop up on both sides of the pond, it’s becoming apparent that the obsessive recasting of ’60s and ’70s rock and soul is not a passing fancy; rather, it appears to be the vanguard of a full-on renaissance. As Jakob Dylan told me recently when talking about the impulse that led to him to make Seeing Things, an audaciously stripped-down solo LP of folky originals in the manner of his legendary dad’s early recordings, “Sometimes you’ve gotta go backwards to go forward.”

The two-pronged benefit of this mindblowing resurgence of bedrock sounds is that it’s turning on a new generation of fanatical music lovers while giving Boomers something to get excited about again—and for once, Mom and Dad can say to the kids, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Because there’s something going on, and you know exactly what it is, don’t you, Mr. Jones?