Stream: Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, ‘Howling at Nothing’

Kevin Bronson on September 10th, 2015

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If you saw Nathaniel Rateliff at the Silverlake Lounge back in the summer of 2009, or at the Echo the following year, you could hardly have imagined Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats. Back then, fronting his band The Wheel, the Missouri-bred, Denver-based songwriter was fast becoming everybody’s secret favorite folkie; his rapturous voice and seemingly effortless storytelling made his 2007 debut a treasure, and his solo albums and EPs that followed earned him more followers and landed him some sweet tours (like when he stole the show from the Lumineers). Now he’s become a soul man, and the new album “Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats” proves he stacks (Stax?) up with about anybody. Backed by a band including Joseph Pope III, Mark Shusterman, Patrick Meese, Luke Mossman, Wesley Watkins and Andy Wild, Rateliff unleashes a joyous dose of the gospel sound he must have heard as a churchgoing lad in rural Missouri. The album, made with Richard Swift (who’s played with the Shins, the Black Keys and the Arcs, among others, and produced albums by the Shins, Damien Jurado, Foxygen, Tijuana Panthers, the Mynabirds and Gardens & Villa), stomps and grinds with the best of today’s soul revivalists. And there is still Rateliff’s voice, a Heartland thing. Listening to him here — especially in the Howlin’ Wolf homage “Howling at Nothing” — just took some getting used to.

||| Stream: “Howling at Nothing,” “S.O.B.” and “I Need Never Get Old”