ALBUM REVIEW: Mike Farris Delivers Soul from Muscle Shoals
Henry Carrigan
Posted On March 4, 2025
Mike Farris was born to record in Muscle Shoals. If you close your eyes when you’re listening to Farris’s new album, The Sound of Muscle Shoals, you’d swear you’re listening to Clarence Carter, Wilson Pickett, or Joe South. Drenched in the bone-shaking power of soul and the transcendent strains of gospel, Farris’s gritty vocals get deep in our bones, moving us to dance and transporting us to a brighter place.
The soaring Southern soul rocker “Ease On” launches the album, fueled by Will McFarlane’s, Kelvin Holly’s, and Wes Sheffield’s screaming guitars and riding on layers of Clayton Ivy’s waltzing Wurlitzer chords. The escalating chorus of background vocals lift this ode to moving on from home and looking back on it into the sonic stratosphere. Brightly strummed acoustic guitars twine around punchy Wurlitzer notes and swampy lead riffs on the minor chord anthem to humility, “Heavy on the Humble.”
“Bird in the Rain” picks up where “Ease On” left off, with the same rolling Wurly intro, and moves into a swirling stride blues with a swaying New Orleans undertone. Aching pedal steel strains lead off “Bright Lights,” a soulful country rocker—which sonically resembles a sound that might result from a jam between the Marshall Tucker Band and Pure Prairie League—that takes a long look back at the pleasures and pains of life on the road. The shimmering acoustic soul ballad “Learning to Love,” co-written by Farris and McFarlane, that traces the singer’s determination to learn how to love, while “Before There Was You & I” aches in the soul—especially on the instrumental bridge—like the best of Percy Sledge.
Aided by Wendy Moten’s ethereal background vocals, Farris delivers a towering take on Steve Cropper’s and William Bell’s classic gospel song “Slow Train,” made famous by the Staples Singers. The album closes takes a sonic riff from the Tams’ “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy,” on the strolling, Carolina soul-infused “Sunset Road.” The song will have us “shaggin’ on the boulevard” and joining along in singing the closing gospel-inflected chorus: “we will never worry no more.”
The Sound of Muscle Shoals showcases Mike Farris at his very best. Every song on the album delivers soul-stirring music that captures the energy of one of his live performances, and it conveys how deeply soul and gospel music dwell in him.
Mike Farris’s The Sound of Muscle Shoals is out March 7 via Fame Records
