G. Love & Special Sauce - Love Saves The Day (2016) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

For his 10th studio album, G. Love invited friends to help him create Love Saves The Day releasing on 10/30. The album features guest artists Lucinda Williams, Citizen Cope, David Hildago of Los Lobos, Ozomatli, DJ Logic, Money Mark, Zach Gill and Adam Topol. Producer Robert Carranza (Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys) recorded the group live to capture the raw electricity of the tracks.

Love Saves The Day features the down and dirty “trashcan blues” sound of G. Love and his long-term Special Sauce rhythm section – upright bassist James “Jimi Jazz” Prescott and drummer Jeffrey “The Houseman” Clemens. Engineer and producer Robert Carranza (Jack Johnson, Beastie Boys, Mars Volta) recorded the group live with few edits to capture the raw and unfiltered electricity of the tracks. “The music,” G. Love enthuses, “jumped off the tape.”

Love Saves the Day kicks off with a title track that lurches like prime Black Keys, but this isn't a sign that G. Love & Special Sauce are scrambling to keep up with the times, nor is it an indication that they're aching for their past. Instead, the band – which, as on 2014's Sugar, is a reconstituted version of their original lineup featuring guitarist/vocalist G. Love, drummer Jeffrey Clemens, and bassist Jim Prescott, who returned in 2014 after a five-year hiatus – feel as if they're pulling together all their interests, both past and present, to engage with a perpetual now. For G. Love & Special Sauce, they live in a world where soul-jazz is filtered through hip-hop and co-exists happily with greasy electric blues; a world where rap, R&B, and rock are traditions to be played with, not treated with respectful distance. Appropriately, all the invited guests – and there are a lot of them – share this sensibility and all these musicians underscore the group's wide-ranging interests. Roots rock stalwarts David Hidalgo and Lucinda Williams stand alongside the funkier Ozomatli, Money Mark, and DJ Logic, plus there's a feint toward pop via a duet with Citizen Cope. It's aggressively eclectic but it's not showy: it doesn't draw attention to its cornucopia of sounds, it simply slides from one jam to another. If the songs don't necessarily stick, that's fine – this is all about vibe, the idea of creating a never-ending party where everybody is welcome and, in that regard, G. Love & Special Sauce succeed. (Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG)

Tracklist:
01. Love Saves The Day [feat. David Hidalgo]
02. Dis Song
03. That Girl
04. Back To Boston
05. New York City [feat. Lucinda Williams]
06. R U Kidding Me?!
07. Muse [feat. Citizen Cope]
08. Baby Why You Do Me Like That? [feat. DJ Logic]
09. Let’s Have A Good Time [feat. Ozomatli]
10. Peanut Butter Lips
11. Pick Up The Phone [feat. Kristy Lee]
12. Lil’ Run Around

Personnel:
Garrett Dutton aka G. Love, vocals, guitar, harmonica
Jim Prescott aka Jimi Jazz, bass
Jeffrey Clemens aka Houseman, drums