Louisiana singer/songwriter/guitarist Josh Hyde is back with his second album, Into the Soul, buoyed by the success of his 2017 Call of the Night. Again guitarist/producer Joe V. McMahan (Kevin Gordon, Mike Farris) is at the helm for this effort which is more ranging than its predecessor. It’s a different sound technically as well. Hyde and McMahan used a 24-track analog machine, eschewing the customary digital path. Hyde considers this sound “human and imperfect” but it gives an urgency and emotional rawness to the record.
Commencing with the blues-funk of “Rocking Chair,” we start tapping to the contagious swampy beat, but “Smile” sounds more like a ‘70s pop song, as Hyde acknowledges that a simple smile could have changed his feeling of regret and abandonment. Chris Lippincott’s pedal steel meshed with Jimmy Wallace’s (Joe Walsh) gloomy piano chords is the perfect sound for the deeply passionate ballad “For You I Ache,” a clear standout track, revealing Hyde’s emotive vocal. This leads to the upbeat shuffle of “Lover’s Curse,” the kind of Louisiana tune one might associate with Sonny Landreth, carried along by Wallace’s B3 and searing guitars from Hyde and Joe V.
As we’ve already called out several backing musicians, the rest of the band includes the rhythm section of drummer Derek Phillips and McMahan cohort, bassist Ron Eoff. Hyde uses the nursery rhyme phrase “one, two buckle my shoe” as a lead-in to the groove-laden, slide-driven “The Edge of Love,” a brief swampy tune. The enthusiastic “The Key” floats along gently behind swirling organ and punchy guitar fills. While the title “Down on Bourbon Street” would suggest raucousness, it is instead a warm love song from a rather ironic place to fall in love, given its associations of sleaziness.
”All You Need Is Soul” is filled with pondered, spontaneous blues riffs and dynamic changes from practically spoken word lyrics that build to boisterous moments that’s emblematic of the “human and imperfect” process that Hyde refers to. The soulful, beat-driven “Call My Name,” with a sound that Hyde calls “Nashville funk,” threatens to explode at various moments but stays in the pocket awash in resonating guitars.
Hyde was born in Baton Rouge but moved to New Orleans when he was seven years old. Although he was there for only three or four years, the city made its impression on him. His parents were divorced before he became a teenager, when he began living in Alexandria with his mother and traveling to Baton Rouge by bus every other weekend to visit dad. He began playing guitar at the age of ten, eventually becoming a popular act in clubs and festivals throughout Louisiana. In his late 20s, he fell in love with slide guitar after hearing Sonny Landreth. Landreth played on Hyde’s debut and labeled it “funky, atmospheric, and soulful.’
Here Hyde trades in the “atmospheric” for a more conventional ‘hit radio’ approach on a few tunes. He says, “With music, I’m always down to something that’s soulful and has some kind of blues element in it.” Acknowledging the slight departure from his debut, he says, “That’s just kind of where I started as a guitarist, and that’s probably something that’s always going to bleed through. There’s a song on Into the Soul called “Can’t Let Go” that could be considered an FM-mainstream, Tom Pettyish-kind of vibe. It’s kind of just a fun, almost a radio song, which is kind of a departure from the rest of the record.” Hey, let’s not fault Hyde for trying some different things. It’s part of the maturation of an artist. As long as he keeps mining his deep pocket of soul, we’ll be listening.
