Jesse Dayton – Country Soul Brother

Based on the title of this fourth release from Jesse Dayton and a brief soul-review-styled tour he embarked on a few months back, expectations were set for 45 minutes of music with Muscle Shoals and Memphis coursing through its veins.

There are such moments (most notably “It Won’t Always Be Like This” and “Just to Get You Off My Mind”, a pair of terrific country-soul brothers goosed by horns and B3 organ, respectively), but like its predecessors, this album’s heart is bellied up to the bar at an Austin honky-tonk. That said, if your definition of soul includes a sentence about an artist singing and playing his or her guts out to put songs across, then Country Soul Brother is most definitely a soul record.

“Daily Ritual” and “One Of Them Days” represent what commercial country radio sounds like in my head, if not on the dial — smart and twangy without feeling forced, and sung with conviction and control. Other highlights include the swaggering “Tall Walkin’ Texas Trash” (the protagonist’s list of offenses offering another angle on the word conviction) and the borderland party twins “All Because Of You” and “Moravia”. Best of all is the catchy, punchy valentine “Ain’t Grace Amazing”.

My only gripe is over a cover of the Cars’ “Just What I Needed”. The arrangement is too swell — think Dwight Yoakam’s reworking of “I Want You To Want Me” — for the song to be considered a misstep, but I would have preferred the space be used for one more of Dayton’s, well, soulful originals.