Most times a new act comes up following the traditional rock practices with more contemporary twists, it doesn't take long for the whole thing to backlash with boredom, arrogance and pretension. Not with this guy though.
New York-based singer-songwriter, Luke Rathborne, follows his 2015 album, Soft, and single, Losing It, from last year with an excellent new single. Don't Call Me Baby organically and by nature recalls the mellow spirit of Roy Orbison and the songwriting adroitness of Bruce Springsteen, gracefully paralleling to the all-time greats, and executed with sincerity and not a single hint of mimicry or dishonesty.
"You could really feel the history in the room," Rathborne exclaimed concerning the studio where he recorded the song, located in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, the same place where Wu Tang Clan recorded Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) twenty four years ago.
1950s tropes meet with the rocking zest of the seventies in a package which immediately emerges heartily familiar and excitingly new, like the embodiment of that overused saying: they don't make them like that anymore...
AJC