It has been a few years since I first heard Mofro’s stellar debut album Blackwater but last year’s excellent Country Ghetto and the recently released Orange Blossoms show a band that has grown by leaps and bounds over the last seven years. From the swampy blues of their early material, JJ Grey and Mofro have morphed into something a little smoother and a little more polished and (for what it’ s worth) Orange Blossoms is basically a soul/blues album, but a killer one at that. The songs, the performances, and the production on the record are almost flawless and constantly sound as if the ghost of Otis Redding had a hand in it. While JJ Grey’s vocals get right to the redline and then back off into a sweet falsetto, blues guitar, electric piano, orchestration, and brass from the Hercules Horns provides a tuneful, soulful, and subdued backdrop that is anything but over the top. It all might sound a bit strange coming from someone like me; someone who prefers punk to most everything else and isn’t much a blues fan. That universality is (however) what makes Orange Blossoms jump from the speakers as if JJ Grey is preaching directly to his listeners without the medium in between. The music is boisterous when it needs to be and down tempo when the song calls for it. Orange Blossoms sounds loose and “in the pocket” but also manages to sounds perfectly placed. It is almost as if (at times) JJ Grey is at the mercy of his songs and possessed by his own music.

MP3 | JJ Grey & Mofro – Orange Blossoms Orange Blossoms
MP3 | JJ Grey & Mofro – Everything Good Is Bad Orange Blossoms

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