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“You’ve got me down on the floor,” coos Grace Potter on “Paris (Ooh La La),” the sultry opening track on her self-titled third album with the Nocturnals. And just as she’s revealed more leg and less Hammond B-3 with each album, Potter has also courageously taken those bold steps to mingle her sexuality with those soulful pipes. With two new band members and a growing confidence in their fashion presentations, the band isn’t shy about letting smiles, mini-skirts, sideburns and retro hip moustaches gleam amongst their musical offerings.
While Grace Potter and The Nocturnal’s first two albums on Nothing But The Water and This Is Somewhere had the Neil Young stamp of timelessness on them, this third self titled album only suffers from the fact that it could end up sounding dated in all its polished splendor. Obviously Potter is trying to hit a new chord with the older female set – take a happy-go lucky number like “Tiny Light” and have it performed on Ellen and the marketing plan here is obvious. The recordings here come off both saccharine and urgent: “’Goodbye Kiss” is as happy a break-up song you’ll ever hear, while “Oasis” might be her cross-over opportunity to the indie crowd. But its where visits her inner Bonnie Raitt, as in the raunchy “Medicine” or the slow bluesy jaunt “Low Road,” where she’s not trying too to be a cross-over star that her artistry shines brightest. Grace Potter and The Nocturnals know they are good, and now that they are selling records (debuting #20 on the Billboard 200), going forward they just have to please nobody but themselves.
