Personal New Orleans melting pot.
Swedish expat Osborne, living in New Orleans, was considered promising for a while by Sony, but got dumped after one CD already. His previous CD proved that label wrong convincingly: it was a desparately sounding record about a lost love, obsessedly played and produced clearly. This one does that too. Overall it sounds optimistic, recorded with a lot of fun in the playing and breathing a swampy and relaxed live feel.
Fourteen songs long Osborne mixes his trusted influences (blues, gospel, second line, country-folk, jazz and pop) at the intersection of those styles. He reverts to them, but after two stereotipic openers he manages them at will with beautiful, natural melodies.
Osborne plays his music with a small band, in which sousaphone player Kirk Joseph very traditionally plays almost all bass lines this time. There is a lot of emphasis on natural second-line swing: jerking and jubilant horns, percussion and drums play a big part.
On top of this, Osborne sings about seeking for happiness and the pitfalls along the way. Except traditional, he is also personal in that: the lyrics once again are an autobiographical account of his search. This way, a versatile rock ‘n’ roll doctor successfully refutes the theory that beautiful art always results from grieve.
Who likes five star CDs should however, besides this new one, pick up this master of swing’s previous one at the same time, the fully unjustly completely ignored Living Room, maybe even from the sales corner.
****1/2
Published in Dutch roots music magazine Heaven no. 13, July-August 2001/no. 4