The older the grape, the sweeter the wine, and this fourth album in 31 years is Duke & the Drivers best and most complete work to date. The title track opens the festivities with authority and that authority continues over the dozen tracks. It's not just that Joe Blaney's production is impeccable -- you can hear absolutely everything crystal clear -- it's that along with that sterling recording the groove is locked in. "Just Ain't the Rock" lilts and creeps along with fun backing vocals, chirping horns, and guitar that Steve Cropper would identify as having come from the study of Booker T. & the MG's. The first single, "Funk All Over the Place," is a blast. The 4:41 album track is great, but so is the 6:28 extended mix, which should have been included on the album. "Got funk all over the place/started on my hands/ended up on my face" gives an idea of what these guys have been singing about all these years -- wine, women and song -- in no particular order. The mayhem bubbling throughout borrows liberally from both Marvin Gaye's production work and that density Jimmy Miller put into the Rolling Stones' "Tumblin' Dice." The big difference is that "Tumblin' Dice" was a stunningly majestic blur while Marvin Gaye wove so many clean textures that they became complex. This polishes those ideas into a remarkable concoction of soul, R&B and rock that has a terrific stereo mix which generates non-stop excitement. Duke & the Drivers were always fun on record, but this goes beyond the irreverence of "Love Bones," and their great hit, "What You Got," both off of the Eddie Kramer produced 1975 debut, into an entirely different realm. The stuff here is just masterful, still tongue-in-cheek, but played with chops the band didn't have back in the day. Kenny White, Doug Dube, and over a dozen other musicians all contribute to this tour de force and it really is a team effort. The pity here is that these fellows took three decades to keep the party going. If Dr. John took "Another Kind of Love," there's no telling where it could go, but as recorded here it provides a nice change of pace, a south of the border lament that has a little smile tucked inside the seriousness, which is the whole reason Duke & the Drivers exist. "Prodigal Son" concludes the album like a lost track from Beggars Banquet that a bar band picked up and decided to issue years after the fact. No, it's not the Reverend Robert Wilkins song the Stones covered, but it's got a groove and all the elements radio in the new millennium is in desperate need of.
© Joe Viglione /TiVo