RL Heyer

RL has a knack for capturing the nostalgia aspect of American music, and has been known to play every instrument you can name to make sure that sound comes through in his tunes. While this uncanny ability to reach back into time and bring new music forth can sometimes result in anachronisms, Heyer has done something truly amazing on his first solo album. On Sweet Action Heyer has found his home. He is rarely assisted on the album’s eight tracks, but left alone with his own imagination Heyer’s classic rock dream has come true. There isn’t a weak track on the album, and Heyer’s voice is stronger than ever. Sweet Action opens with the delicious mid century ring of vibraphone and roiling snare. Heyer quickly establishes a psychedelic feel–somewhere between Bowie‘s Space Oddity and Floyd‘s Dark Side– and the album is instantly established as an orchestra you’re allowed to play loud. The psych-rock freak out, one of Heyer’s trademarks, comes faithfully on the next track. With that out of the way he breaks into a honky-tonk in the style of Lovin Spoonful‘s “Nashville Cats” called “Hideaway.” Stumbling on a rock record like this is like meeting an old friend, then realizing what it is about them you missed. The songs continue to fall out of Heyer just so, building a brick-and-mortar solid album without weakness. “Song for the Top of the Mountain” is as epic as its title suggests: triumphant guitar escalates up an epic track to the sound of marching drums. “Ghostly Glow” is perhaps the album’s best song, like an “Eleanor Rigby” that trades acoustic arpeggio for damn depressing cello, and lays down some supernatural allegory about perspective. Heyer’s nimble mastery over the guitar can be experienced in full on “The Letter.” Perfect strums trade bars with scale runs in a song so strikingly beautiful you almost don’t notice how good his singing is. The album finishes as strong as it begins, with RL begging introspection on “Paradise” and giving hindsight advice on “Flannel.” - Sean Jewell, American Standard Time Hard rock. 4-part vocal harmonies. Solid-as-a-rock rhythm section. Deep lyrical content. 6 amazing soloists. Pretty sounds.