Opening their latest release Chain Link with the one-two punch of the title track and “Groove Town” makes it clear that Little Muddy’s talents are built on solid fundamentals. Their familiarity with blues and rock doesn’t have any artistic distance; the band, particularly guitarist and dominant songwriter Rich Goldstein, wholeheartedly embrace those traditional sounds without ever imitating anyone. You hear recognizable twists and turns along the way, yes, but Goldstein stamps each of Chain Link’s fourteen compositions with personal authority that burns away any superficial comparisons.
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Little Muddy starts the album off with its title song. It’s a statement of confidence. One of the many things the band has working in their favor is the unforgettable guitar sound Goldstein gets here and on other electric guitar tracks. It has a hard-charging touch that never steamrolls listeners; co-producer Adam Rossi works well with Goldstein to lock down an in your face yet warm tone for this track and the remaining thirteen.
Kevin White and Mark Abbott, bass and drums respectively, provide able rhythm section support. The latter shines during the title song and its follow-up “Groove Town”. Abbott’s work on the kit accentuates the upbeat buoyancy Goldstein and his cohorts are aiming for without sacrificing much of the grit heard throughout these instrumentals. Acts and albums without vocals are always a harder sell than most in the contemporary music world and Chain Link faces the same challenges.
One of the key elements, however, separating Little Muddy’s work is their sense of songcraft. These aren’t self-indulgent instrumental explorations but, rather, condensed songs constructed for maximum effect. Few of them run longer than three minutes but quasi-interludes such as “In The Distance You’ll See” sparkle thanks to the different instrumental voices Little Muddy employs. New sounds creep their way into this brief composition but they never sound out of place.
“Scirocco Escape” will be a peak track for a lot of listeners. The production invests it with a significant amount of atmospherics, never gimmicky or cheap, and it boasts a pressure cooker-like quality that finds release at well-chosen points. Little Muddy plays as a band here with quite a bit of bite – it isn’t just a platform for Goldstein to show off his songwriting talents or guitar playing skill.
Another of the album’s short acoustic pieces arrives with “300 Years from Now” and its bleak acoustic musings are not without beauty. The overall tone isn’t especially inviting, but Little Muddy nonetheless mines lyrical passages from the dark and this track is among the highlights of the album’s “lighter” half. They mix swinging percussion with Goldstein’s blistering lead guitar for the track “Ricardo’s Ride” and it crackles with Latin swagger without ever succumbing to cliché. The same vital instrumental attack integral to the first thirteen songs drives the last one as well. “Route 51 South” steams ahead, full-throttle, with another impassioned turn on guitar from Goldstein. The band’s longtime guitarist is the tip of the spear for Little Muddy and he sounds engaged as never before throughout Chain Link.
Chadwick Easton