Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – The Future (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – The Future (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 41:51 minutes | 797 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Stax

For the recording, Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats escaped to Nathaniel’s new Colorado studio to write an album’s worth of songs, shedding light on their unique observations and songwriting reflecting on our current times. While recognizable, the new work has evolved and pushes the band to a new level.

“I look at the album overall as a big question,” notes Rateliff. “When I was writing the record we were in the middle of a pandemic and our future looked pretty bleak. I just continue to try to write from a place of hope. Then my own neurosis, and maybe being a libra gets in the way, and I can’t make up my mind. There is this constant back and forth battle in me personally and I am sure that comes out in my writing.”

Recorded at Rateliff’s own Broken Creek Studio outside of Denver, The Future was produced by Bradley Cook (Bon Iver, Kevin Morby, The War on Drugs) and R.M.B.—the production trio of Rateliff, Patrick Meese (The Night Sweats) and James Barone (Beach House)—who were the team behind Rateliff’s acclaimed 2020 solo album, And It’s Still Alright. Additional production was added by musician, engineer and producer Elijah Thompson (Father John Misty, Richard Swift) while Jenny Lewis, Jess Wolfe (Lucius) and Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso) contributed backing vocals.

Five years into the most successful phase of his career, Nathaniel Rateliff suffered an identity crisis. His bold 2015 transformation from lyrical indie folk act to retro-soul bandleader went about as well as he could have hoped; his full-band debut, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, went gold, effectively launching the Denver singer/songwriter into the mainstream. Their 2018 follow-up, Tearing at the Seams, was similarly successful, but when Rateliff found himself in a more introspective mood, he resumed his solo career and recorded the more subdued and personal And It’s Still Alright. Faced with the prospect of having to keep dividing his material between two camps, Rateliff took a gamble and tried to fuse some of the Night Sweats’ rock & roll swagger with the more thoughtful tone of his solo work. This creative reckoning leads the band down some interesting paths on The Future, their third outing together. Without fully abandoning the rugged soul-rock of their first two records, Rateliff and his crew take a more exploratory and collaborative approach that is ultimately quite satisfying. Opening the album, the rousing country-soul title track is not only the best of the bunch but one of Rateliff’s best tracks to date. A world-weary mid-tempo barn burner with a host of gutsy payoffs, it sets the nervy tone that gives this album its identity. The Night Sweats could easily have carried on churning out the type of retro-R&B party music that built their career, but Rateliff made the right choice in giving them some weightier material to chew on. The question of where to go next is at the heart of the excellent Harry Nilsson-esque “Something Ain’t Right,” a chunky piano pop gem over which he bellows “Part of me feels I’ve arrived, but sometimes it don’t align.” A dark, almost angry grit shades cuts like “Survivor” and the punchy “So Put Out,” while the sparse “Baby I Got Your Number” breaks the band down to their core elements. Likewise, the shuffling “Love Me Till I’m Gone” finds the Night Sweats channeling the autumnal blue-eyed soul of Van Morrison, a sound that suits them well. By the time they close with the fiery Motown vamp “Love Don’t,” Rateliff and his band have covered a nice range of moods on what is their most diverse release yet.
– Timothy Monger

Tracklist:
1. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – The Future (03:41)
2. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Survivor (04:01)
3. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Face Down In The Moment (04:39)
4. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Something Ain’t Right (03:34)
5. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Love Me Till I’m Gone (03:48)
6. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Baby I Got Your Number (03:31)
7. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – What If I (03:34)
8. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – I’m On Your Side (03:18)
9. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – So Put Out (03:01)
10. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Oh, I (03:28)
11. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Love Don’t (05:10)

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