Album Review: Roosevelt Dime - Steamboat Soul (Self Release)

Like a breath of fresh air Roosevelt Dime's new album STEAMBOAT SOUL comes at a time when we could all do with a little bit of New Orleans spark and glow. Following their impressive debut CROOKED ROOTS (2009) this new album evokes the spirit of New Orleans and the Mississippi River, incorporating the less than expected instrumentation of banjo, bass, drums and a variety of brass and woodwind, together with five fine voices. Subtitled Modern Music for Old Souls, which could just as easily have been Old Music for New Souls, the album comes across as a sort of cross between Dixieland jazz and bluegrass, with an immediately accessible sense of melody, possibly from the additional influence of the jugband tradition crossed with Motown dance music.

The Dada-inspired artwork reflects what might have been happening artistically in contemporary Zürich during the 1920s but the music is very much centred around the Deep South at roughly the same time. Then there's the distinctive relationship to the music of The Band, the late 1960s undisputed giants of the yet to be coined Americana, which all possibly goes toward making the music of Roosevelt Dime feel quite unique.  

For a New York-based outfit, Roosevelt Dime, named after the coin produced shortly after the death of America's 32nd President, evokes the spirit of New Orleans and the Mississippi River remarkably well for a group of musicians from Brooklyn. With Hardin Butcher on trumpet and cornet, Eben Pariser on bass, Seth Paris on clarinet and saxophone, Andrew Green on banjo and Tony Montalbano on drums, Roosevelt Dime have all the ingredients to shake up any party.

Opening with the jaunty Simple Man, the album meanders along the Mississippi taking in all the music from the riverboats, the basement jazz bars, the bourbon-soaked street corners of the French Quarter, resplendent in their wrought iron Creole magnificence and streetcar charm and all this from a band who turned Radiohead's High and Dry into a late night Honky Tonk smooch classic on their debut album. 

Whilst Wishing Well quite rightly deserves to be the single from this album, with its feelgood groove, incorporating everything that made good the collaboration between Van Morrison and The Band way back in the Last Waltz days, You Have to Pay ventures more into the spirit of Charlie Mingus, with its less constrained freer jazz approach. 

The Dixieland aspect manifests itself frequently but it has a vibrancy that is not immediately recognisable in straight trad jazz. Watta Shame sound like it was recorded live whilst the audience tucks into jambalaya and catfish; that sort of immediacy. The slower more sensitive songs are handled with equal respect, with a soulful feel such as the tenderly orchestrated Long Long Time.

The band have been causing quite a stir by playing shows up and down the U.S. East Coast, including headlining slots at the Oberlin Folk Festival in Ohio and the Delmarva Folk Festival in Delaware. In a perfect world, Roosevelt Dime should have already broken through to the mainstream with their debut album. With a second album of such high standard of musicianship and credibility, together with a considerable fanbase, most of whom contributed to the making of this album via Kickstarter.com, it might not be long before Roosevelt Dime finally make their mark, and not before time.