On their third effort, Rides On, The Nude Party producing themselves for the first time manage to create their most consistent album yet. The vibes may be a little chiller, the songs a little mellower, but little else has changed. The band’s Rollings Stones and Velvet Underground influences can still be heard throughout Rides On, (Patton Magee’s vocals on the title track come off with the effortless cool of Lou Reed singing “I’m Waiting for the Man”). But with Ride On, you can also hear their penchant for old country records and Southern Swamp funk as well.
In fact, The Nude Party does an inspired cover of Dr. John’s “Somebody’s Tryin’ to Hoodoo Me,” with some of the band’s most inspiring guitar work. A decent effort that doesn’t quite live up to the original, but one that’s impressive, nonetheless. However, it’s the band’s original songs that really move the record forward. The unrushed low-key funk of “Tell Em” is one of the band’s strongest tracks yet in their decade long tenure. The same can be said of the fantastic “Hard Times (All Around),” a song thats catchy hooks seem to contradict the lyrics. It’s a track born from an old Dylan song. “’Hard Times’ started as a tune that Don (Merrill) demoed on piano,” said Magee. “He showed it to me while I was driving down to Brooklyn from upstate, listening to early Bob Dylan demos. There’s an old American folk tune called ‘(Hard Times) Down on Penny’s Farm’ by the Bentley Brothers in 1929. In 1965, Bob Dylan rewrote it as “Hard Times in New York Town,” changing most of the lyrics. I was listening to Don’s piano and thinking about that.” Magee didn’t have to look too deep into the past to find lyrics reflecting on recent hurricanes decimating towns and the Supreme Court stripping long held rights from Americans.
The North Carolina band built their own studio in a barn in the Catskills to be able to record this album without worrying about wasting money and being rushed in a rented studio. They invited Matthew Horner to come up and engineer the album. The result is a freer flowing record that admittedly takes a few sessions to really stick, but once it does, you realize that it just might be – song for song – their strongest album yet.
