The Red Clay Strays Find Redemption and Raw Power on ‘Grateful’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

From Mobile, Alabama, The Red Clay Strays broke into the public consciousness when they got together with producer Dave Cobb to record Made by These Moments (2024). It opens with an ominous strut, alluding to, David, the biblical second king of Israel, and closes with a meditation on God’s faithfulness. With that album’s first single “Wanna Be Loved” now garnering well over 185 million streams on Spotify, The Red Clay Strays have established themselves as the gritty southern rock band that delves into trouble and redemption in equal measure.

Reuniting with Cobb, The Red Clay Strays have returned with Grateful, an album that attempts to strike while the iron of the band’s recent success is hot. While the first two singles, “If I Didn’t Know You” and “Demons in Your Choir,” lean into the band’s gospel sound, Grateful also provides a generous allotment of the band’s southern rock side. Caught in the balance of their musical personality is the running theme of the struggle against bad behavior.

Opening with “Demons in Your Choir,” lead singer and rhythm guitarist Brandon Coleman sings, “You know the devil keeps us company/ With all his bright and shiny things/ It ain’t a church just cause it feels good/ It ain’t an angel cause it’s got wings.” Throughout the album, unnamed characters and people like the singer himself, society at large in the riffy “People Hatin”, or good old cousin Billy in the romping “Don’t Wanna Know” face choices: follow the path of turmoil or follow the path of peace.

Whether the singer faces the dilemma or not, he is often personally involved. In “Demons,” as the piano and organ swell to the chorus, he adds, “If I could pull you from the fire/ Then maybe I could save you/ From those demons in your choir.” Later, near the end of the album, Coleman bluntly acknowledges that he can’t “fix” a person whose “demons keep winning.” But that doesn’t stop him from advocating for someone who can.

As with all of The Red Clay Strays’ work, Grateful is steeped in the Christian imperatives of redemption and reconciliation. But it rarely, if ever, comes across as heavy-handed or preachy. Coleman’s voice, whether crooning or impassioned, often has the tone of a gentle older brother. It’s the voice of a guy who has been down that road and knows where it ends. 

It helps that he’s surrounded by what is essentially a roadhouse band built on the three-guitar foundation laid by Lynyrd Skynyrd and the dueling lead guitar aesthetic of the Allman Brothers that often pits slide against straight. It also helps that the songs vary in tone. For every gospel number like “Revival” where Coleman sings, “You feel defeated like you’re lost in sin/ Come to the water and come live again,” there’s a roadhouse blues number like “Down South,” which functions as a tribute both to Skynyrd and life south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Throughout Grateful’s roughly 46 minutes, the band shifts and shimmies with an open, live sound that makes you feel like you’re either in a bar or church depending on the song. Cobb and the band seem to have deliberately muddied the waters for a swampier sound than on Made By These Moments. On hard endings, you can hear amplifier reverb and more than a little buzzing in some cases. It has some blemishes, including Coleman’s occasionally pitchy vocals. One also has serious doubts that a click track was used.

Ultimately, these things grant the record an immediacy that it would not otherwise have and do little to disguise how tight this band is. Bassist Andrew Bishop and drummer John Hall shift tempos down to half time or up to double time or from a shuffle to a two-step without batting an eye. Lead guitarists Drew Nix and Zach Rishel add subtle comments, such as on the ballad “If I Didn’t Know You,” or duke it out bold as brass on the album’s standout blues burner “Fools Gold,” on which Coleman elucidates his sensual attraction to, one assumes, his wife. And the keyboardist, Sevans Henderson, fills out the sound with what is almost certainly a real piano and a Hammond organ. Although you may not care for the production or for the Christian themes, The Red Clay Strays have a take-it-or-leave-it authenticity that is as unbothered by your perception as it is by its own lack of pretention. Grateful is all heart, and that, as much as anything else, is refreshing.